Maine HOA Water Conservation

Maine isn't a silent-statute state on this topic. It enacted 33 M.R.S. § 1451, "Protection of low-impact landscaping," in 2023, which bars a condominium or common-ownership association from placing an "unreasonable limitation" on water-conserving landscaping on an owner's exclusive-use area, though the protection doesn't clearly reach conventional fee-simple planned-community HOAs.¹

Section 1: Overview, how water conservation interacts with HOA authority in Maine

Maine departs from the assumption that Northeastern, water-abundant states have no statute limiting association authority over water-conserving landscaping. In 2023 the Legislature enacted 33 M.R.S. § 1451, "Protection of low-impact landscaping," which prohibits a covenant, declaration, bylaw or rule from placing an "unreasonable limitation" on low-impact landscaping on the portion of a condominium or common-ownership property that an owner has the right to use exclusively, so long as the owner maintains and regularly tends to it.¹ The statute is narrower than the sweeping xeriscape-protection laws of the West: it applies to condominiums and to residential real estate held in undivided common ownership, and by its definitions it doesn't clearly reach conventional planned communities where lots are owned in fee simple.¹ For those planned-community HOAs, water-related landscaping rules are governed by recorded CC&Rs, the association's architectural-control provisions, the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act for corporate formalities, and local water-utility rules, not by any HOA-specific water statute.¹⁰ Maine's separate body of water-resource law — the riparian doctrine administered by the Department of Environmental Protection — governs water allocation and doesn't bear on an HOA's authority over landscaping.⁴ Nationally, Maine now sits between the drought-driven statute states — California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Florida — and the silent, CC&R-governed states: it has a targeted protection statute, but one limited in scope. What follows details the statutory framework, what it requires of associations, and recent legislative activity.

Section 2: The statutory and regulatory framework

2A. Statutory limits on HOA authority over water-efficient landscaping

A search of the Maine Revised Statutes returns a provision directly on point: 33 M.R.S. § 1451, "Protection of low-impact landscaping," enacted as Public Law 2023, chapter 376.^1,11 The statute defines "low-impact landscaping" as "landscaping techniques that conserve water, lower maintenance costs, provide pollution prevention and create habitat for wildlife," and expressly includes pollinator gardens, "rain gardens and other features that use natural biological principles to return rainwater to the soil," and "other forms of landscaping or gardening that reduce or eliminate the need for supplemental water from irrigation."¹ Its operative prohibition provides that a "restriction may not put an unreasonable limitation on low-impact landscaping" on the portion of a condominium or real estate subject to common ownership that is not itself common area and that the owner has the exclusive right to use, as long as the owner maintains and regularly tends to the landscaping.¹ The definition of "unreasonable limitation" in § 1451(1)(E) "includes a limitation that significantly increases the cost of low-impact landscaping, significantly decreases the efficiency of low-impact landscaping or requires cultivated vegetation to consist in whole or in part of turf grass."¹ This places Maine among the states, alongside jurisdictions such as California, Cal. Civ. Code § 4735, Florida, Fla. Stat. § 373.185, and Texas, Tex. Prop. Code § 202.007, that limit association authority over water-conserving landscaping, though Maine's version is narrower. It doesn't use the term "xeriscape," it doesn't create a drought-enforcement suspension, and by its definitions it reaches condominiums and undivided common-ownership real estate rather than fee-simple planned communities.¹ The general condominium framework, the Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1601-101 et seq., is the backdrop for use restrictions and architectural control, but it doesn't itself single out water use; § 1451 sits in a separate chapter, Chapter 28-B, added specifically to create the protection.²

2B. Related water law, drought response, rainwater and graywater

Maine's water-resource framework is separate from HOA landscaping authority and shouldn't be read as governing it. The state follows the riparian doctrine, and the Department of Environmental Protection administers Title 38 water law, including oversight of significant withdrawals; this body of law allocates water and doesn't empower or constrain an association's landscaping rules.⁴ No state drought-declaration mechanism reaches private landscaping enforcement. Drought response in Maine is coordinated by the Maine Drought Task Force, convened through the Maine Emergency Management Agency, which monitors conditions and advises but doesn't suspend private covenants or bar HOA enforcement against dormant lawns.⁵ On rainwater, § 1451 protects rain gardens as a form of low-impact landscaping, but the Revised Statutes contain no separate provision creating a general rainwater-harvesting right against an HOA.¹ On graywater, a search of Title 38 returns only 38 M.R.S. § 423-D, which regulates graywater and blackwater discharges from commercial passenger vessels and has no application to residential associations.³ The practical takeaway is that water-resource and drought material is background context for Maine communities, not a source of HOA landscaping rules.

2C. Where water-conservation rules actually live in Maine

For most Maine associations, the operative water-related landscaping rules are found in the recorded declaration and its architectural-control provisions, not in a statute. The Maine Condominium Act supplies the general use-restriction and architectural framework for condominiums created after January 1, 1983, with transition provisions for earlier ones, while planned communities have no comprehensive statute and operate under their CC&Rs plus the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, Title 13-B, for corporate formalities.^12,10 Where § 1451 applies, it overrides a conflicting private restriction on a protected owner's exclusive-use area, but it preserves reasonable design and aesthetic guidelines and doesn't apply to historic property listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.¹ The practical source of any owner-facing water-use rule is the local water utility. Portland Water District, Bangor Water District, and the Lewiston Water Division operate outdoor-watering guidance, conservation programs and rebates independently of the HOA framework.^6,7,8 A manager looking for "Maine HOA water conservation law" will find the controlling rules in the declaration, in § 1451 where it applies, and in the local water utility's measures, rather than in a broad HOA water statute.

Section 3: What the framework requires of HOAs

A. Landscaping approval and architectural review

For condominiums and common-ownership properties, an association may not use architectural review to impose an unreasonable limitation on protected low-impact landscaping on an owner's exclusive-use area, but it may still enforce reasonable design and aesthetic guidelines on the type, number and location of features, under 33 M.R.S. § 1451 — a mandatory protection for covered properties that a declaration cannot vary away.¹ For planned communities, and for landscaping outside § 1451's reach, architectural approval is governed by the recorded declaration.²

B. Drought response and watering restrictions

No Maine statute requires an association to relax landscaping standards during drought, and no state drought declaration suspends HOA enforcement; the governing layer remains the CC&Rs.⁵ When a local utility imposes mandatory outdoor-watering restrictions, those measures apply to the owner directly.⁶

C. Rule adoption and disclosure

Associations organized as nonprofit corporations must observe corporate formalities for adopting and recording rules and amendments, under the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act, Title 13-B.¹⁰ Condominium associations must also follow the Act's record-keeping and disclosure provisions, including access to records of executive board actions approving or denying architectural requests, under the Maine Condominium Act, 33 M.R.S. § 1603-118.¹³

D. Enforcement limits and conflicts

Where § 1451 applies, an association's enforcement of a turf-grass or high-water landscaping requirement against a protected owner is limited by statute.¹ A conflict between a CC&R requiring a green lawn and a local utility's watering restriction is a contract-versus-local-rule tension resolved under general law, not under a water-conservation statute.⁶ The Maine Condominium Act's applicability-of-local-laws provision, 33 M.R.S. § 1601-106, confirms that the Act doesn't invalidate or modify valid local regulation.¹⁴

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

LD 1132, 132nd Legislature, 2025, "An Act to Further Protect Low-impact Landscaping," sponsored by Senate President Mattie Daughtry, sought to expand § 1451 to close gaps in coverage identified by supporters, but it didn't become law.⁹

The foundational statute, 33 M.R.S. § 1451, originated in LD 649, 131st Legislature, "An Act to Promote Water Conservation and Water Quality and Create Habitat for Wildlife, Including Pollinator Species, by Protecting Low-impact Landscaping," enacted as Public Law 2023, chapter 376, which became law without the Governor's signature on July 2, 2023, and took effect for the 131st Legislature's First Special Session in late October 2023.¹¹

B. Recent Maine Supreme Judicial Court (Law Court) rulings

No qualifying Maine Supreme Judicial Court, Law Court, ruling on HOA landscaping authority, architectural enforcement of water-related restrictions, or 33 M.R.S. § 1451 turned up in the past 36 months. Maine has no intermediate appellate court; civil HOA disputes are tried in the Superior Court and appealed directly to the Law Court.²

C. Active legislative debates

The 2025 effort to broaden § 1451, LD 1132, indicates continued legislative interest in extending low-impact landscaping protection beyond condominiums, but no expansion has passed.⁹

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

On a water-conservation-specific clustering, which differs from a governing-statute clustering, states fall into three groups. The first is states with statutes limiting HOA authority over water-efficient landscaping, concentrated in drought-exposed jurisdictions — California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Florida, Utah, and others. The second is states with partial or emerging provisions. Maine belongs in this second group: it has a targeted low-impact landscaping statute, but one limited to condominiums and undivided common-ownership real estate rather than a broad, drought-driven protection. The third is the silent, CC&R-governed states, which include most of the Northeast. For a multi-state operator, the practical implication is that a firm accustomed to California's or Nevada's xeriscape-protection rules shouldn't assume an equivalent applies in Maine — and shouldn't assume Maine is fully silent, either. Maine has shown modest legislative momentum toward broadening its statute, though no expansion has become law.

HOA Weekly's Maine water-conservation coverage updates quarterly as the Legislature and the Law Court act. For Maine communities, the practically controlling water rules are the declaration, 33 M.R.S. § 1451 where it applies, and the local water utility. Federal frameworks apply to Maine associations regardless of state law — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act among them.

Footnotes

1. Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 33, § 1451, Protection of low-impact landscaping (Maine Revised Statutes, Office of the Revisor of Statutes) ↩
2. Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 33, ch. 31, Maine Condominium Act, § 1601-101 et seq. (Maine Revised Statutes) ↩
3. Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 38, § 423-D, Graywater and blackwater discharges from commercial passenger vessels (Maine Revised Statutes) ↩
4. Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Water Laws (Title 38 index), maine.gov/dep ↩
5. Maine Emergency Management Agency, Drought Task Force, maine.gov/mema ↩
6. Portland Water District (utility rule, not a statute), pwd.org ↩
7. Bangor Water District (utility rule, not a statute), bangorwater.org ↩
8. City of Lewiston, Water and Sewer Division, Water Distribution (utility rule, not a statute), lewistonmaine.gov ↩
9. LD 1132 (SP 453), 132nd Legislature, An Act to Further Protect Low-impact Landscaping, Text and Status (Maine Legislature) ↩
10. Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 13-B, Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act (Maine Revised Statutes) ↩
11. LD 649 (SP 266), 131st Legislature, enacted as Public Law 2023, chapter 376, Text and Status (Maine Legislature) ↩
12. Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 33, § 1601-102, Applicability of the Maine Condominium Act (Maine Revised Statutes) ↩
13. Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 33, § 1603-118, Association records (Maine Revised Statutes) ↩
14. Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 33, § 1601-106, Applicability of local laws and regulations (Maine Revised Statutes) ↩