Why Marion County Restricts Fertilizer Near Silver Springs and Rainbow Springs

September 24, 2026

If you’ve ever wondered why Marion County cares as much as it does about fertilizer, more specifically than most Florida counties do, the answer sits about a mile from downtown Ocala at Silver Springs, and about 20 miles southwest at Rainbow Springs. Both are named explicitly, by name, in the county’s own ordinance.

The ordinance itself

Marion County adopted Ordinance No. 08-35, the “Marion County Ordinance for Florida Friendly Fertilizer Use on Urban Landscapes,” on November 4, 2008. Its stated purpose, laid out in the ordinance’s own findings, is straightforward: nutrient runoff and leaching from fertilizer degrade surface water and groundwater, and that’s a bigger problem in what the ordinance calls a “springshed community” like Marion County, where stormwater and drainage conveyances sit close to groundwater that feeds directly into the county’s springs.

The ordinance sets specific limits: nitrogen can’t be applied at more than 0.7 lbs of readily available nitrogen per 1,000 square feet at any one time, with an annual cap that varies by grass species (3 lbs per year for Bahiagrass or St. Augustinegrass, 4 for Bermudagrass or Zoysiagrass, 2 for Centipedegrass). Phosphorus on existing turf is capped at 0.25 lbs per 1,000 square feet per application, and 0.5 lbs per year. Fertilizer can never be applied, spilled, or washed onto an impervious surface, and any accidental spill has to be immediately and completely cleaned up, not just left to wash away.

The part that names Silver Springs and Rainbow Springs directly

Section 9 of the ordinance establishes “Fertilizer Free Zones,” areas where no fertilizer can be applied to turf at all, regardless of the rate. Most of these are defined generically: 75 feet from a water body with a county Environmentally Sensitive Overlay Zone, 15 feet from the top of the bank of a drainage retention area or canal, 100 feet from a sinkhole with a surface opening (a real consideration in a county with documented karst sinkhole activity).

But one provision names specific water bodies outright: no fertilizer within 75 feet of the ordinary high water line of Silver Springs, Silver Run, Rainbow Springs, or the Rainbow River. Marion County has two federally recognized Outstanding Florida Springs, Silver Springs and Rainbow Springs, and both have been the subject of state total maximum daily load studies identifying urban fertilizer, agricultural runoff, and septic systems as major sources of the nitrogen loading that’s degraded their water quality over recent decades. The ordinance’s specific, named callout of these two springs (plus Silver Run and the Rainbow River, both connected waterways) reflects exactly that concern.

What this ordinance is not

It’s worth being precise about what Ordinance 08-35 actually regulates, because it’s easy to conflate with irrigation rules given how closely fertilizer and watering practices are connected in practice. This is a fertilizer ordinance. It does not set a watering-day schedule. The legally binding watering restrictions that actually govern when you can run your sprinklers come from a completely different source: St. Johns River Water Management District’s Phase III order for most of the county, or Southwest Florida Water Management District’s Modified Phase III order for Dunnellon and The Villages. Neither of those water-management-district orders references the fertilizer ordinance, and the fertilizer ordinance doesn’t set watering days. They’re two separate sets of rules that happen to both apply to the same yards.

Where a well-run irrigation system fits into this picture

Even though the fertilizer ordinance doesn’t regulate irrigation directly, the two are connected in a practical sense that matters if you live anywhere near one of Marion County’s springs or spring-fed waterways. Overwatering, whether from a head that’s overspraying onto a driveway and then running off into a storm drain, or a lateral line leak nobody’s noticed yet, moves water off the property in an uncontrolled way. Whatever that water picks up along the way, including any fertilizer applied on the lawn between the point of application and a drainage conveyance, moves with it.

A system with correctly adjusted coverage (see zone coverage fix and adjustment) waters the lawn it’s meant to cover and nothing beyond it. A system without an undetected leak (see broken line and leak repair) isn’t quietly pushing extra water, and anything in it, into the ground in one uncontrolled spot for days or weeks. Neither of these is required by the fertilizer ordinance itself, but both reduce the kind of uncontrolled runoff the ordinance exists to prevent, especially for the properties genuinely close to Silver Springs, Rainbow Springs, or the Rainbow River where the 75-foot buffer applies directly.

The honest bottom line

Marion County didn’t write a fertilizer ordinance that names two specific springs by accident. Silver Springs and Rainbow Springs are both nationally significant, both measurably affected by decades of nutrient runoff, and both explicitly protected in county code as a result. Whether or not fertilizer rules apply directly to your property, a well-maintained, well-adjusted irrigation system is a small, practical way to be part of the solution rather than part of the runoff problem the ordinance is written to address.