Marion County's Two Watering Schedules: Which One Actually Applies to You

September 24, 2026

If you’ve ever heard two neighbors in Marion County describe two completely different watering schedules and assumed one of them must be wrong, you were half right, except both of them were probably correct, just for different addresses.

Marion County sits in two water management districts

Florida’s water management districts are regional agencies with their own jurisdiction over water use, including landscape irrigation restrictions, and they don’t follow county lines. Most of Marion County, including the City of Ocala, falls under the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD). But the city of Dunnellon and The Villages fall under the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) instead, which also covers a swath of neighboring counties (Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, and others) to the south and west.

That split isn’t a technicality. It means two genuinely different sets of legally binding watering rules apply within the same county, on the same day, to different addresses.

The St. Johns schedule, covering most of Marion County

As of this writing, St. Johns River Water Management District has Marion County under a Phase III Extreme Water Shortage order, effective since May 11, 2026, due to ongoing drought conditions and declining groundwater levels across northeast Florida. Under this order:

• Odd-numbered addresses (or no address) water Saturday only.
• Even-numbered addresses water Sunday only.
• Nonresidential properties water Tuesday only.
• Irrigation is prohibited between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day, regardless of your scheduled day.
• No more than three-quarters of an inch of water per zone, and no more than one hour per zone, on your scheduled day.

Newly installed plants, sod, or landscaping get a shortened, more generous establishment allowance: any-day watering for the first 15 days after installation, up to 3 days a week for the next 30 days, and up to 2 days a week for the final 15 days before falling back to the standard one-day-a-week rule.

This schedule covers Ocala, Belleview, Silver Springs Shores, Summerfield, On Top of the World, Marion Oaks, and Reddick, every service area on this site except one.

The Southwest Florida schedule, covering Dunnellon and The Villages

Southwest Florida Water Management District’s current order is called a Modified Phase III “Extreme” Water Shortage, extended through March 31, 2027, and it uses an entirely different structure: your watering day is set by the last digit of your street address, not by whether it’s odd or even.

• Address ending in 0 or 1: water Monday only.
• Address ending in 2 or 3: water Tuesday only.
• Address ending in 4 or 5: water Wednesday only.
• Address ending in 6 or 7: water Thursday only.
• Address ending in 8 or 9: water Friday only.

Permitted hours are also different from St. Johns’ rule: midnight to 4 a.m., or 8 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. Properties on a lot of one acre or larger get to use both windows on their scheduled day; properties under an acre are limited to just one of the two.

This schedule covers Dunnellon and The Villages, the two exceptions carved out of St. Johns’ territory within Marion County.

Why this matters more than it sounds like it should

We get calls that sound like a mechanical failure but turn out to be entirely a scheduling mismatch. A homeowner in Dunnellon, going by the “odd address Saturday” rule they heard applies “in Marion County,” programs their controller for Saturday. Under the actual SWFWMD schedule for their address, that might be completely wrong, and the system is now running on an illegal day, hours before or after the legal window, without the homeowner doing anything wrong except trusting the wrong rule.

The reverse happens too: someone in Summerfield, living right next door to The Villages and hearing about that community’s last-digit schedule, assumes it applies to them as well. It doesn’t. Summerfield is under St. Johns River Water Management District, the standard odd/even Saturday/Sunday rule.

Both mistakes look, from the homeowner’s side, exactly like “my sprinklers are broken” or “my controller won’t hold the right schedule.” Most of the time, nothing is actually broken. The schedule programmed into the controller is simply wrong for the district that legally covers that specific address.

What to actually do about it

Step one, every time, is confirm your district, not your assumption about “Marion County’s rule.” If your address is in Dunnellon or The Villages, you’re under Southwest Florida Water Management District’s last-digit schedule. Everywhere else covered on this site, you’re under St. Johns River Water Management District’s odd/even Saturday/Sunday schedule.

Step two is confirming your controller actually matches that schedule, not what you assume it’s set to. Programs drift after storms, after a controller replacement, or after a previous owner or a different technician set it up under an older order that’s since changed.

Step three, if you’re not sure, is a diagnostic visit. Confirming the correct legally binding schedule for your exact address, and making sure the controller is actually running it, is something we check as a matter of course on every controller repair or programming call, and it’s often the actual fix behind what looked like a mechanical problem.

Because both districts’ orders are active water-shortage declarations rather than permanent, fixed rules, it’s worth checking back periodically, especially if you hear that drought conditions have changed regionally. Neither schedule described here is guaranteed to be the same a year from now, and getting your controller updated when a district’s order changes is a five-minute fix compared to the water wasted, or the citation risked, by continuing to run an outdated schedule.