Conway SC Water Restrictions 2026

Current water restrictions in Conway, South Carolina

As of mid-July 2026, the City of Conway has not declared a mandatory watering stage. That is the short answer, and it deserves honest framing: Conway is not under a schedule, but it is sitting in the middle of the worst drought Horry County has recorded in decades. The July 9 U.S. Drought Monitor update placed Horry County entirely in extreme drought — D3, the second-most-severe category the federal monitor uses — after the July 2 map had already shown 99.3 percent of the county at that level. In late June, the South Carolina Drought Response Committee upgraded Horry, Marion, and Dillon counties to severe drought status, the declaration that set off the wave of utility responses now rolling across the Pee Dee region.

What changed for Conway on July 1 happened one level up the pipe. Grand Strand Water & Sewer Authority, the regional wholesaler that treats and supplies the drinking water Conway distributes to its customers, activated its Drought Management Plan that day. The plan is a pricing lever rather than a policing one: GSWSA lowered the monthly threshold at which excess-use charges kick in from 8,000 gallons to 6,000 gallons, and asked customers across its territory to skip lawn watering on Mondays and stay off their irrigation between 6 and 9 a.m. GSWSA officials have said they do not intend to impose a mandatory reduction, regardless of how long the drought runs.

Conway's neighbors are moving faster. Twelve miles up Highway 701, Loris declared a drought emergency on July 1 and attached real penalties to it — a story we covered in detail when the Pee Dee's severe drought pushed Loris into enforcement. Statewide, the numbers tell the same story: as of early July, 15 South Carolina water systems had enacted mandatory restrictions and roughly 40 more were asking for voluntary conservation, and by July 8 all but 11 of the state's 46 counties carried at least a severe drought designation. Conway, for now, is in the voluntary column. Residents should treat that as a request with teeth behind it — the conditions that forced Loris's hand are the same conditions flowing, or failing to flow, past Conway's own riverfront.

Your assigned watering schedule

There is no mandatory schedule in Conway as of mid-July 2026. No odd-even split, no assigned days, no enforced hours. What exists instead is the guidance GSWSA issued when it activated its drought plan on July 1, which applies in spirit to everyone drawing from the regional system, including City of Conway utility customers:

• Skip Mondays entirely. GSWSA has asked all customers on the regional system to give irrigation a full day off at the start of each week.
• Avoid the 6 to 9 a.m. window. This is the system's peak-demand period, when household use, commercial use, and irrigation all stack on top of each other. Watering outside it eases strain on treatment and distribution capacity.
• Hand watering and drip irrigation remain unrestricted. With no declared stage, there are no exemption rules to memorize — but a hose with a shutoff nozzle or a drip line on new plantings is the low-guilt option while the county sits in extreme drought.

If you want to get ahead of what a declared stage would likely look like, adopt a two-day-per-week pattern voluntarily and water in the evening or before dawn, avoiding that morning peak. That is the shape most South Carolina utilities use when they do go mandatory, and lawns in Horry County's sandy soils genuinely do better on two deep soakings than on daily sprinkles. One caution for readers on the edges of town: Conway's city limits, GSWSA's retail service areas, and the Loris system all interlock across western Horry County. Loris customers are under mandatory bans on washing driveways, filling pools, and vehicle washing. Check the name on your water bill before assuming which rules apply to you.

Fines and penalties

Because Conway has not declared restrictions, there is no fine schedule and no violation-reporting hotline in effect inside the city. Nobody in a city truck is writing tickets for a running sprinkler. The enforcement mechanism that does exist in July 2026 is financial and mostly invisible: GSWSA's lowered excess-use threshold means heavy irrigators on the regional system hit higher-priced water at 6,000 gallons a month instead of 8,000. A household running an irrigation system three or four times a week in a drought summer will blow past 6,000 gallons without trying, so the drought plan effectively bills its way toward conservation. Conway bills its own utility customers through the city's Utility Billing Department, and the city buys every gallon wholesale from GSWSA — customers with questions about how drought-period costs flow through to city bills should call the Utility Billing Department at (843) 248-1780, while water service questions go to Conway Public Utilities at (843) 248-1770.

For a preview of what enforcement looks like when a Horry County city does pull the trigger, look at Loris. Its July 1 drought emergency established a ladder: a written notice for the first violation with a $25 surcharge added to the water bill, a $50 surcharge for the second, and after a third violation, termination of water service, restored only after payment of a $100 surcharge. Loris also moved its own excess-use billing threshold to 6,000 gallons. If Conway's council or the state Drought Response Committee escalates, expect something in that family — surcharges layered onto bills rather than municipal court citations — because that is the pattern the Pee Dee's utilities have settled on this summer.

Conway's water supply and source

Here is the detail that surprises most Conway residents: the blackwater river curling past the Riverwalk is not what comes out of the tap. Conway's drinking water is treated at GSWSA's Bull Creek Regional Surface Water Treatment Plant, which draws from the Great Pee Dee watershed at Bull Creek, west of the city — the short channel where the Great Pee Dee and Little Pee Dee systems braid together before heading for Winyah Bay. The Bull Creek plant is the workhorse of inland Horry County, rated at 45 million gallons per day with an expansion underway to push it to 60 MGD. Its regional system supplies not just Conway but Loris, Little River, the Georgetown County Water and Sewer District, and Tabor City across the North Carolina line. When one plant carries that many communities, a basin-wide drought is everybody's problem at once.

And this is a basin-wide drought. The Pee Dee's flows are made of rain that falls from the North Carolina Piedmont down to the coast, and that rain has simply not come. Horry County is running roughly nine inches below normal rainfall over the past six months, and March 2026 was the county's driest March in 132 years of record-keeping. The state's severe-drought upgrade for Horry, Marion, and Dillon counties in late June was a formal acknowledgment that the rivers feeding Bull Creek are shrinking. GSWSA's drought plan exists precisely to stretch the plant's raw supply through a summer like this one — every irrigation cycle skipped in Conway is capacity preserved for the whole eight-community system, including the one just upstream that has already declared an emergency.

The Waccamaw at 3 percent: why regulators watch Conway's river

Conway is a river town before it is anything else — the Riverwalk, the marina, the tour boats, the drawbridge shots that end up on every postcard. In July 2026 that river has become the region's most-watched drought gauge. The Waccamaw at Conway Marina has been running at roughly 3 percent of its normal flow for the date. Three percent. Locals are seeing riverbanks exposed that are normally feet underwater, and boaters are dodging snags and sandbars that haven't surfaced in years.

The Waccamaw is a blackwater river, born in Lake Waccamaw over the North Carolina line, tea-dark with tannins and fed almost entirely by rainfall and swamp drainage rather than mountain snowmelt or big reservoirs. That makes it one of the first rivers in the basin to show drought stress and one of the last to recover — which is exactly why state regulators track it as a bellwether for the entire Pee Dee drought response. Conway sits upstream of the Grand Strand on this river: the Waccamaw flows from Conway down toward the Intracoastal Waterway corridor that threads behind Myrtle Beach, where city officials began urging conservation at the end of June. When the flow past Conway Marina collapses, everyone downstream pays attention. The county seat has become, functionally, the drought's early-warning station — and what its residents do with their sprinklers is part of the signal.

HOA rules during water restrictions

South Carolina gives homeowners no statutory shield here, and Conway residents in HOA neighborhoods — including the newer subdivisions filling in along Highways 501 and 90 — should know that plainly. The South Carolina Homeowners Association Act (Title 27, Chapter 30 of the state code) covers document recording, budget-meeting notice, records access, and magistrate court jurisdiction. It says nothing about lawns, irrigation, drought, or landscaping. There is no South Carolina equivalent of the laws in Texas, Florida, or North Carolina that bar associations from fining members for complying with government watering rules.

In practice, that leaves Conway homeowners with three tools. First, the current situation itself: with no declared city restriction, an HOA demanding a green lawn is asking you to do something legal, so your leverage is persuasion — share GSWSA's drought plan notice and the county's extreme-drought designation with your board and ask for a written suspension of turf standards for the duration. Many boards will grant it; a lawn-maintenance fine issued during a federally mapped extreme drought is terrible community politics. Second, if restrictions do get declared, a covenant demanding conduct that a city ordinance prohibits puts the association on shaky ground, and boards generally know it — get any city or utility directive in writing and keep it with your records. Third, the state Department of Consumer Affairs accepts complaints against homeowners associations under Section 27-30-340 and reports on them annually; it cannot void a fine, but the complaint record matters. Document everything: dated photos of the lawn, copies of drought notices, and every communication with the board.

Lawn survival guide for Conway

Horry County lawns are warm-season lawns, and the good news is that warm-season grasses are built for exactly this kind of summer. The sandy, acidic soils around Conway drain fast and favor centipede grass above all — it is the default lawn across the county — with bermuda, zoysia, and St. Augustine filling out the rest. Each handles drought differently, and knowing which one you have determines your strategy.

Whatever you grow, the drought playbook is the same. Water deeply and infrequently — a single long soak that pushes moisture six inches down grows roots that can find water on their own, while daily light sprinkling grows shallow roots that die in the first hot week. Raise your mower to its highest setting; taller blades shade the soil and slow evaporation. Skip fertilizer entirely until conditions break, because feeding a drought-stressed lawn forces growth it cannot support. Leave clippings on the lawn as mulch. And stay off dormant grass — brown centipede is alive but fragile, and tire ruts or heavy foot traffic now become bare patches in September. A brown lawn in Conway in July 2026 is not neglect. It is a lawn doing what warm-season grass evolved to do, in a county where the river is at 3 percent.

Frequently asked questions

Are there mandatory watering restrictions in Conway right now?

No. As of mid-July 2026, the City of Conway has not declared a mandatory watering stage or schedule. Horry County is in extreme drought, the state has designated the Pee Dee region as being in severe drought status, and GSWSA — Conway's wholesale water supplier — activated its Drought Management Plan on July 1, but for Conway customers that plan brings pricing changes and voluntary requests, not enforceable watering days.

Can I still water my lawn in Conway?

Yes, legally. The regional guidance is to skip Mondays, avoid the 6 to 9 a.m. peak-demand window, and cut back overall. A voluntary two-day-per-week deep-watering routine keeps a lawn alive while honoring the spirit of the drought response.

Will my water bill go up because of the drought?

It can. GSWSA lowered its monthly excess-use threshold from 8,000 to 6,000 gallons when it activated its drought plan, so heavy users on the regional system reach higher-priced tiers sooner. Conway bills its own customers through the city's Utility Billing Department; call (843) 248-1780 to ask how drought-period charges apply to your account.

Where does Conway's drinking water actually come from?

Not the Waccamaw. Conway buys treated water from GSWSA's Bull Creek Regional Surface Water Treatment Plant, which draws from the Great Pee Dee watershed west of the city and also supplies Loris, Little River, Georgetown County, and Tabor City. The Waccamaw flowing through downtown is the drought's most visible gauge, but the tap water rides in from Bull Creek.

What would push Conway into mandatory restrictions?

Two triggers to watch: an upgrade from the state Drought Response Committee beyond severe status for Horry County, or a supply squeeze at the Bull Creek plant serious enough that GSWSA and its member cities move past voluntary measures. Loris's July 1 drought emergency shows how quickly a Horry County system can escalate when local conditions demand it.

Can my HOA fine me for a brown lawn during this drought?

South Carolina law does not prevent it — the state's Homeowners Association Act contains no drought or lawn-maintenance protections. Your best moves are asking your board in writing to suspend turf standards during the declared drought, documenting conditions with dated photos, and filing a complaint with the SC Department of Consumer Affairs if the association refuses to bend.

Is the Waccamaw River safe for boating right now?

Use extra caution. With flows near 3 percent of normal at Conway Marina, banks are exposed and snags and sandbars sit at or just below the surface in stretches that are normally deep. Low water concentrates hazards that Conway boaters have not had to think about in years.

What days can I water my lawn in Conway?

No mandatory schedule — GSWSA asks customers to skip Mondays and avoid watering 6–9 a.m. Hand watering with a shut-off nozzle is typically allowed any day during permitted hours.

What time can I water in Conway?

Watering is allowed during designated hours. Watering outside these hours is a violation even on your assigned day.

What are the fines for watering violations in Conway?

First offense: None — no declared restrictions. Repeat violations: escalating fines. Contact City of Conway / Grand Strand Water & Sewer Authority for the full enforcement schedule.

When will water restrictions end in Conway?

Current Extreme Drought — Conservation Encouraged restrictions are in effect through Until drought conditions improve. Monitor https://www.conwaysc.gov/ for the latest status.

Can I hand water during Conway water restrictions?

Yes. Hand watering with a hose fitted with a shut-off nozzle is generally allowed on any day during permitted hours. Drip irrigation and soaker hoses are also typically exempt from the day-of-week schedule. Confirm specifics with City of Conway / Grand Strand Water & Sewer Authority.

How do I report a water waste violation in Conway?

Contact City of Conway / Grand Strand Water & Sewer Authority at (843) 248-1770 or visit https://www.conwaysc.gov/. Most utilities accept online reports and respond within 48 hours.