Seguin TX Water Restrictions 2026

Current water restrictions in Seguin, Texas

As of mid-July 2026, Seguin is operating under Stage 3 of its drought plan — the stage the city's ordinance calls the Alert stage — with outdoor watering limited to two assigned days per week and banned entirely between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. Even addresses water Sundays and Thursdays, odd addresses Saturdays and Wednesdays, commercial properties Mondays and Fridays. Violations run $100 to $200 per day, and the city can shut off your meter for repeat offenses.

The rules come from Seguin's Drought Contingency and Water Emergency Response Plan, which the city council rewrote in December 2024 under Ordinance 2024-066 — timing that turned out to matter, because the plan got its stress test almost immediately. Stage 3 sits in the middle of a five-rung ladder: it triggers when the Schertz-Seguin Local Government Corporation (SSLGC) tells the city that demand is approaching 120 percent of the monthly groundwater volume permitted by the Gonzales County groundwater district, when system storage tanks recover to only 60 percent of capacity for three straight days, when TCEQ's South Texas Watermaster flags river diversions at 120 percent of the authorized rate, or when the Guadalupe River itself drops toward the safe operating limit of the city's intake pumps.

That last trigger is the one that stings in Seguin, a city that has organized its identity around the Guadalupe mainstem — the dammed river pools at Max Starcke Park, the tube chutes, the city-owned hydroelectric dams that date to the 1890s. Seguin is also booming: the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate put the population at 38,789, up nearly 32 percent since 2020 — the fastest growth in the San Antonio metro — with every new rooftop drawing on the same two sources at once.

The regional picture offers no relief valve. San Antonio remains in SAWS Stage 3 with the Edwards Aquifer's J-17 index well far below its recovery threshold, New Braunfels is holding at Stage 2 upstream, and Seguin's own pipeline partner Schertz is under the SSLGC's Stage 4 wholesale restrictions — a once-every-14-days watering cadence that is currently the tightest in Texas.

Your assigned watering schedule

Seguin's Stage 3 schedule is set by ordinance, and it works on your street address number, not your neighborhood or ZIP code:

• Even-numbered addresses: Sundays and Thursdays
• Odd-numbered addresses: Saturdays and Wednesdays
• Commercial and nonresidential properties: Mondays and Fridays
• Hours on your assigned days: 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. only — the daytime window from 10 a.m. through 8 p.m. is closed

Two exemptions do a lot of work here. First, Seguin's ordinance bans sprinkler irrigation between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. year-round, in every stage — but it explicitly exempts a handheld hose, a handheld watering device, and drip irrigation systems, which can be used at any time. If you are standing there holding the hose over a tomato bed at noon on a Tuesday, you are legal. Second, watering with reuse water or collected rainwater is exempt from the reduction measures entirely, so a rain barrel bank or an air-conditioner condensate line buys you flexibility the calendar doesn't.

Stage 3 also switches off a list of water uses completely, regardless of day or hour:

• No filling swimming pools — only makeup water to replace evaporation and backwash losses is allowed
• No washing cars, trucks, RVs, or boats at home; commercial car washes remain open at this stage
• No new landscaping plants or projects that require watering
• No washing driveways, sidewalks, buildings, or other impervious surfaces except for immediate health and safety
• No street washing, and restaurants serve water only when a customer asks
• Waste of water — runoff into gutters and ditches, unrepaired controllable leaks — is prohibited at all times

Note what is not in the plan: there is no new-sod establishment carve-out of the kind SAWS runs in San Antonio. Under Seguin's Stage 3, a new lawn is a new landscaping project that requires watering — not allowed until the stage lifts. New homeowners in the subdivisions going up along State Highway 46 and FM 78 should plan accordingly.

Fines and penalties

Seguin's enforcement ladder is written as a per-day civil penalty that climbs with each stage, set at the discretion of the city manager or a designee:

• Stage 1 (Normal/Awareness): $25 to $50 per day for wasting water
• Stage 2 (Mild/Watch): $50 to $100 per day and/or water service disconnection
• Stage 3 (Alert — current): $100 to $200 per day and/or water service disconnection
• Stage 4 (Severe/Risk): $100 to $500 per day, with disconnect procedures "in full force" for any Stage 4 violation
• Stage 5 (system or water quality failure): $100 to $1,000 per day

The phrase to take seriously is per day. An irrigation controller left on its spring schedule — running three nights a week instead of two, or kicking on at 6 p.m. — is a violation every day it runs. And because the penalty is paired with disconnection authority, a customer who ignores notices can lose service entirely and pay the disconnection and reconnection charges on top of the fines.

Enforcement runs through the City of Seguin's utility operation rather than a separate drought police. Violations and water waste can be reported to the Water Department at 830-379-3212 during business hours; after hours, the city's utilities incident line at 830-401-2404 handles anything urgent. In practice, the first contact for most residential violations is a door hanger or letter identifying the date and the rule — but nothing in the ordinance requires the city to warn before it fines.

Seguin's water supply and source

Seguin is that rare Texas city with two genuinely independent sources: its own surface water rights on the Guadalupe River, and Carrizo Aquifer groundwater from the SSLGC wellfield in Gonzales County. The river came first — Seguin grew up on the Guadalupe, dammed it for power generation over a century ago, and still holds diversion rights administered by TCEQ's South Texas Watermaster. The groundwater came later, and deliberately: in December 1998 Seguin and Schertz chartered the Schertz-Seguin Local Government Corporation as a jointly and equally owned wholesale supplier, drilled a wellfield into the confined Carrizo-Wilcox formation in northwest Gonzales County, and began pumping in September 2002 through a transmission main that runs the water west toward both cities.

SSLGC has since grown into a regional player. Its permitted production expanded from 12,500 to 20,000 acre-feet per year, and it sells treated water under contract to Selma, Universal City, Springs Hill Special Utility District, and even the San Antonio Water System. But every acre-foot is capped by permits from the Gonzales County Underground Water Conservation District, and the Carrizo is a confined aquifer — high quality and steady, but slow to recharge and politically finite. When demand across the whole customer list surges in a drought summer, the corporation's fixed permits and pipeline capacity become the binding constraint, which is exactly why SSLGC's board has pushed its wholesale service area into Stage 4.

The river side is no healthier. Flow in the Guadalupe at Seguin depends heavily on two upstream inputs: releases from Canyon Lake, the basin's only major reservoir, and the output of Comal Springs at New Braunfels, the largest spring system in Texas. Comal Springs is fed by the Edwards Aquifer — the same aquifer whose J-17 index well has kept San Antonio in Stage 3 — so when the Edwards drops, spring flow drops, and the river that Seguin's intake pumps rely on runs thinner. A multi-year drought therefore squeezes both of Seguin's straws at once: the aquifer permits out east and the river current through town. Two sources are only insurance if they fail independently. This drought has been broad enough to stress both.

The city that built a pipeline for this drought — and still hit Stage 3

Seguin's Stage 3 is a different story from its neighbors', and the difference is ownership. When the SSLGC board escalates, customer cities on the far end of the pipe enforce what the pipe can deliver — that is why Schertz and Cibolo are on a 14-day watering cycle. Seguin, as a co-owner with its own second source, runs its own municipal drought plan and has so far held at two days a week. The 1998 decision to build the corporation — made when Seguin was a town of barely 22,000 — is the reason a city that has grown by a third since 2020 still has a functioning lawn-watering schedule at all in the summer of 2026.

But co-ownership cuts both ways. Seguin's Stage 3 triggers are written directly against SSLGC's numbers: the stage activates when the corporation's general manager reports demand approaching 120 percent of the monthly permitted groundwater supply. In other words, the pipeline's stress is Seguin's stress, by ordinance. And the corporation's obligations to its contract customers — including the San Antonio Water System, a utility more than twenty times Seguin's size — mean the wellfield's spare capacity is already spoken for. The uncomfortable arithmetic is that both sources were sized for a smaller Seguin, and the next increment of supply — new wells and permits in Gonzales County, or firmer surface storage — will be slower and costlier than the last. Stage 3 is what that transition looks like from the inside.

HOA rules during water restrictions

Texas law is unambiguous here. Texas Property Code § 202.007 prohibits a property owners' association from enforcing deed restrictions in a way that punishes a homeowner for complying with official water restrictions — a lawn that goes brown and dormant because you watered only on your assigned Sunday and Thursday is protected. The statute also bars HOAs from prohibiting drought-tolerant landscaping outright, from banning rain barrels and rainwater harvesting systems, and from forbidding water-conserving turf or drip irrigation.

Because Seguin's Stage 3 is a formally declared stage of a city drought ordinance, the statute's protections are fully active for every HOA-governed neighborhood in the city, from the newer sections off Rudeloff Road to the subdivisions filling in toward Lake McQueeney. If your association sends a violation notice over turf condition, respond in writing, cite § 202.007 and Seguin's Stage 3 declaration, and keep a copy. The statute does not cover mowing, weeds, dead trees, or rules unrelated to water use — a dormant lawn still has to be a maintained one.

Lawn survival guide for Seguin

Seguin sits on the edge of the Blackland Prairie where it meets the post oak sands, with brutally hot summers and clay-heavy soils in much of town that hold water well but accept it slowly. The warm-season grasses that dominate Guadalupe County lawns handle a two-day schedule far better than most homeowners fear — if the two days are used correctly.

Water deep, not often. On your assigned days, run each zone long enough to put down roughly half an inch, using cycle-and-soak on Seguin's clay — two shorter runs an hour apart so water infiltrates instead of sheeting into the gutter, which is itself a "waste of water" violation. Water as close to dawn as the overnight window allows; a 5 a.m. start loses far less to evaporation than 8 p.m. on hot turf.

Let Bermuda and buffalograss go dormant without guilt — they are engineered by evolution for exactly this, and § 202.007 protects the look. Spend your water on St. Augustine sections and on trees and foundation shrubs, which are the expensive things to replace. Raise the mower to 3 inches or higher, skip all fertilizer until restrictions lift, and lean on the drip exemption: a $30 soaker hose looped around a stressed live oak's drip line, running slowly on any day of the week, is the single most cost-effective move the ordinance allows.

Frequently asked questions

What days can I water in Seguin right now?

Under Stage 3, even-numbered addresses water on Sundays and Thursdays, odd-numbered addresses on Saturdays and Wednesdays, and commercial properties on Mondays and Fridays — and only between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 a.m. The 10 a.m.–8 p.m. daytime ban applies year-round.

Can I hand-water or use drip irrigation on non-assigned days?

Yes. Seguin's ordinance exempts handheld hoses, handheld watering devices, and drip irrigation systems from the time-of-day restriction, and watering with rainwater or reuse water is exempt from the reduction measures. That makes drip and rain barrels the best legal tools for keeping gardens, new trees, and shrub beds alive between your assigned days.

What is the fine for watering on the wrong day?

Stage 3 violations run $100 to $200 per day, at the discretion of the city manager or a designee, and the city can also disconnect water service — with the disconnection and reconnection charges billed to you. Because the penalty accrues daily, a misprogrammed sprinkler controller can get expensive fast.

Why is Seguin at Stage 3 when Schertz is at Stage 4?

Different plans, same pipeline. Schertz enforces the Stage 4 restrictions declared by SSLGC, the wholesale Carrizo Aquifer supplier the two cities co-own, which has its customer cities on a once-every-14-days schedule. Seguin runs its own municipal drought plan because it also holds surface water rights on the Guadalupe River — the second source is what has kept Seguin's schedule at two days a week. Statewide status for both cities is tracked on our Texas water restrictions page.

Can I fill a swimming pool during Stage 3?

No. Filling pools is prohibited at Stage 3; only makeup water to replace evaporation and backwash losses is allowed. If the city ever escalates to Stage 4, even makeup water for pools and hot tubs becomes prohibited, so pool owners should cover pools now to cut evaporation.

When will Seguin's restrictions end?

There is no calendar date. Stage 3 recedes when its trigger conditions do — when SSLGC demand falls back from the 120 percent threshold of the permitted monthly groundwater supply, storage tanks recover, and the Guadalupe River rises safely above the intake pumps' operating limit. Given that the river depends on Canyon Lake releases and Edwards Aquifer spring flow at Comal Springs, meaningful basin-wide rain — not a single storm — is what ends this. Check with the Water Department at 830-379-3212 for the current stage before changing your controller.

My HOA fined me for a brown lawn. Do I have to pay?

Push back first. Texas Property Code § 202.007 bars associations from penalizing owners whose lawns brown out from compliance with declared water restrictions, and Seguin's Stage 3 qualifies. Respond in writing, cite the statute, and request the violation be withdrawn — the protection covers drought dormancy, not unmowed grass or neglect.

What time can I water in Seguin?

Watering is allowed 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 a.m.. Watering outside these hours is a violation even on your assigned day.

How do I report a water waste violation in Seguin?

Contact City of Seguin Utilities at 830-379-3212 or visit https://www.seguintexas.gov/483/Water-Department. Most utilities accept online reports and respond within 48 hours.