CHAPEL HILL, N.C.  Devin Ceartas would no sooner give up drying his laundry on a clothesline than he would dig up his spice garden, overturn his rain barrel or get rid of his compost heap.

Air drying is one of the simple, old-fashioned ways the 42-year-old computer programmer and his wife try to make their life in a Chapel Hill subdivision kinder to the environment.

So when their homeowners' association told them two years ago to take down the clothesline, they organized their neighbors. Today, laundry hangs freely from the backyard balconies of Village West townhouses, and aesthetic complaints can be taken up with Ceartas, who last fall became association president.

Switching to clothesline and drying racks saves energy, but residents can get in hot water with associations, landlords or towns that see clotheslines as eyesores. Now, a growing number of states, from Maine to Hawaii are stepping in to override local laws and rules.

"What we're talking about here is a cultural shift," says Alexander Lee, founder of pro-clothesline group Project Laundry List. "It would be nice to go from community association to community association to have this discussion and change the rules, but there are 300,000 of them, and we need to hurry along now if we're going to cope with climate change."

Laws with varying levels of protections for clotheslines passed in May for Vermont, in June for Maine and in July for Hawaii, joining existing laws in Florida, Utah and Colorado.

That doesn't sit well with some local associations, who feel states are stepping into decisions that should be made by local association boards.

Bruce Benton, who serves on the board of the Tamarac subdivision in rural Horse Shoe, N.C., says property values have dropped in the recession and could sink more if residents have to watch underwear flap in the breeze.

"People don't want to see somebody, just because they want to do what they want to do, start breaking the rules," he says. "It starts to look like a tenement."

Benton's neighbor, Bryan Aleksich, assembled a clothes drying rack on his deck in August, despite an association rule against visible clotheslines.

Aleksich, 81, says he is unconcerned about a potential run-in with his board, with which he has sparred before over disagreements like the proper location for his natural gas tank.He says drying in the sun makes his laundry fluffier and saves significant energy.

"It's amazing how appearance is paramount in most people's minds," he says.

More than 5% of electricity used in homes goes to power clothes dryers, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report that looked at energy use in 2001.

Local governments also have prohibitions. The Greenwich (Conn.) Housing Authority deems clotheslines a hazard, and notified residents of one public-housing unit in July it plans to remove their line, says authority Executive Director Anthony Johnson.

Advocates for state action have seen mixed success. Efforts in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Oregon have not succeeded so far, Lee says.

Colorado's law applies only to retractable clotheslines. The law Maine passed this year affects covenants, ordinances and leases created after Sept. 30.

The more-sweeping Vermont law overturns bans in covenants like the ones that govern the condominium associations Paul T. Carroccio's company manages in ski areas. Carroccio said nearly all such groups have bans, which exist to protect homeowners.

"When people buy these things …they're assured the buildings are always going to look the way they're intended to look," he says.

Schrader reports for the Asheville (N.C.)