As part of emergency legislation adopted earlier this year in response to continued drought conditions, an association is prohibited from imposing a fine or assessment against an owner of a separate interest for reducing or eliminating the watering of vegetation or lawns during any period for which the Governor of California declared a state of emergency or a local government declared a local emergency due to drought. 

There was one notable and quite confusing exception to the law. Disciplinary action was permitted (i.e. fining) against an owner for the owner’s failure to water vegetation if the homeowners association used recycled water for landscaping irrigation. The law was peculiar in that a homeowner living in an association that uses recycled water in the common area, but presumably had no access to recycled water for personal use, was treated unfairly. It simply did not appear to promote any form of water conservation and clearly the California Legislature did not realize how confusing their language was or how that language would be applied. 

The confusion appears to have been cleared up. AB 786 clarifies that a homeowner may only be subject to disciplinary action during the State or local emergency related to the drought for failure to water if that homeowner receives recycled water from a retail water supplier and fails to use that recycled water for landscape irrigation. In that very few individual homeowners have access to recycled water, this exception to the prohibition against disciplinary action should only impact a small number of residences.