Stormwater and Environmental Legislation: What Reaches Florida Associations and What Does Not

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 26, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: HOAs · Master associations · Condominiums

This page is current through the 2026 regular session. Be candid with a board about this area: the Legislature rarely touches it directly, and when it does the vehicle is often a ratification of an agency rule or a line in the budget rather than an amendment to Chapter 718 or 720. The durable rules reaching associations are the environmental resource permit program, two statutes protecting owner landscaping and solar choices, and whatever the county and the water management district require locally.

Why this area does not show up in the session summaries

A board reading a session recap will not find stormwater in it. That is not because nothing happens. It is because the operative law is in three places the recaps do not cover.

• Agency rulemaking. The environmental resource permit program is administered through Chapter 62-330 of the Florida Administrative Code, adopted by the Department of Environmental Protection and applied by the water management districts. Rules change on their own schedule.
• Local ordinance. Fertilizer restrictions, irrigation day limits, littoral planting requirements and illicit discharge rules are county and municipal, and they differ across Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties.
• Permit conditions. The specific obligations binding your community are in the permit itself and in the plans it approved, not in any statute. Two communities a mile apart can owe different things.

When the Legislature does act, it often acts by ratification. The 2024 session is the clearest recent example.

2024: the stormwater rule and its legislative ratification

The Clean Waterways Act of 2020, Chapter 2020-150, directed the Department of Environmental Protection to update Florida's stormwater design and operation rules to increase nutrient removal. Because the resulting rule had a large enough economic impact, it required legislative ratification before taking effect.

That ratification came in CS/SB 7040, Chapter 2024-275, effective June 28, 2024. The revised Chapter 62-330 provisions took effect the same day, and Rule 62-330.310, Operation and Maintenance, carries that June 28, 2024 effective date. The bill also extended the window for permit applications filed under the prior standards from twelve to eighteen months after the revised rules' effective date.

For an association with an existing permitted system, the update matters mostly at the margins: a new permit or a modification for a rebuilt system, a new outfall, or a substantial change to the drainage pattern will be reviewed under the newer nutrient-removal standards. For a board planning lake bank restoration or a control structure replacement, ask the engineer early which standard the work will be reviewed under.

Environmental resource permits: what the association is actually holding

Part IV of Chapter 373 is the environmental resource permit program. It covers the construction, alteration, operation, maintenance, removal and abandonment of stormwater management systems, dams, impoundments, reservoirs and appurtenant works. Practically every platted community built in Southwest Florida since the 1980s has one.

The permit has two phases. During construction the developer is the permittee. When construction is complete and certified, the permit converts to the operation phase, and the named operation and maintenance entity takes over. That entity is normally the homeowners association or the master association, and occasionally a community development district. Rule 62-330.310 governs the conversion and the ongoing operation and maintenance obligation.

Section 373.429 gives the district or the department authority to revoke or modify a permit at any time if it determines the system has become a danger to public health or safety, with a short window for an affected party to request a hearing. That authority is rarely exercised, but it is the backstop behind an inspection letter, and it is the reason inspection letters should not sit in a drawer. Our page on stormwater responsibilities covers the maintenance duties that follow.

Permit transfer at turnover, and the failure that keeps recurring

Rule 62-330.340, Transfer of Permit Upon Change in Ownership or Control, is the rule that moves the permit from the developer to the association. It has been in effect since December 22, 2020 in its current form. The transfer is not automatic. It requires an application, and it requires the district to act on it.

What goes wrong is ordinary. The developer finishes, the association takes over the lakes, everybody assumes the paperwork followed, and nobody checks. Years later the association applies to modify the system, or receives a compliance inquiry, and learns the permit is still in the developer's name, that the as-built certification was never filed, or that the system was never converted to the operation phase at all. By then the developer may be dissolved.

1. Pull the permit from the water management district's online records by permit number or by project name. Confirm who the permittee of record is and what phase the permit is in.
2. Confirm the as-built certification and conversion to the operation phase were filed and accepted.
3. Compare the permitted plans to what is actually in the ground. Fill, docks, fences within a drainage easement, and altered lake banks are common and are the association's problem once it is the permittee.
4. Read the permit conditions. They frequently require periodic inspection reports the association has never filed.
5. If the permit is still in the developer's name, start the transfer now and involve counsel if the developer is unresponsive or defunct.

This review belongs in the same file as drainage easement records and the association's plat. Boards that do it once and document it rarely have to do it again.

Florida-friendly landscaping: § 373.185, unchanged since 2009

Section 373.185(3)(b) provides that a deed restriction or covenant may not prohibit or be enforced so as to prohibit any property owner from implementing Florida-friendly landscaping on his or her land, or create any requirement or limitation in conflict with Part II of Chapter 373 or with a water shortage order, other order, consumptive use permit or rule adopted under that part. Paragraph (3)(c) applies the same limit to local government ordinances.

The section was last amended in 2009. It is not new, and it is not changing. It is nonetheless one of the most commonly violated provisions in Southwest Florida architectural guidelines, because guidelines written in the 1990s often mandate St. Augustine turf across the whole yard and prohibit anything else.

Two cautions keep this in proportion. The statute protects Florida-friendly landscaping as the term is defined, not any xeriscape or any reduction in irrigation. And it does not repeal the association's architectural review authority: the association may still require an application, review the plan, and enforce standards on matters the statute does not protect. What it may not do is enforce a covenant to prohibit a qualifying Florida-friendly plan outright. Our guide to landscaping restrictions walks through where the line sits.

Fertilizer ordinances are local, and the state has flirted with preempting them

There is no statewide statute telling an association what fertilizer its landscaper may apply. Counties and municipalities set those rules, and in Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties they typically restrict nitrogen and phosphorus application during the summer wet season, require a percentage of slow-release nitrogen, set buffer distances from water bodies, and require applicator training and licensing.

The Legislature has intervened once in recent memory, and it did so through the budget rather than through a bill. A proviso in a recent General Appropriations Act barred local governments from adopting new fertilizer ordinances for a fiscal year while a university study was completed. It drew substantial attention and was not carried forward into later budgets.

For a board, the operational point does not change with any of that. The association's landscape contract should require compliance with the current local ordinance and with applicator licensing, and should put the risk of a violation on the contractor. Check the ordinance when the contract renews rather than assuming last year's schedule still applies.

Solar and other renewable devices: § 163.04, unchanged since 2008

Section 163.04 provides that a deed restriction, covenant, declaration or similar binding agreement may not prohibit, or have the effect of prohibiting, solar collectors, clotheslines or other energy devices based on renewable resources from being installed on buildings erected on the lots or parcels it covers.

The association is not without authority. An entity with approval power may determine the specific location where solar collectors may be installed on a roof within an orientation to the south, or within 45 degrees east or west of due south, provided the determination does not impair the effective operation of the collectors. That qualifier does the work: a location that materially reduces output is not a permissible determination.

The section has not been amended since 2008. Architectural guidelines that flatly prohibit roof-mounted solar, or that require panels be invisible from the street regardless of effect on output, are unenforceable to that extent and are a straightforward target for an owner's attorney.

What a board should do with this

There is no legislative deadline to calendar here, which is exactly why this work gets deferred. Three items are worth doing once, thoroughly.

• Locate the environmental resource permit, confirm the association is the permittee of record and that the permit sits in the operation phase, and file whatever the permit conditions require.
• Read the architectural guidelines against § 373.185(3)(b) and § 163.04 and strike the provisions that cannot be enforced, before an owner finds them first.
• Pull the current county or municipal fertilizer ordinance and confirm the landscape contract requires compliance with it and assigns the risk of violation to the contractor.

None of this is urgent in any given month. All of it becomes urgent at once when a district inspector writes, a lake bank fails, or an owner installs panels the guidelines say are prohibited.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes advises homeowners, master and condominium association boards in Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties on environmental resource permit transfers and compliance, drainage and lake maintenance obligations, landscape and vendor contracts, and architectural guidelines that conflict with state law. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Regulatory Compliance page.