Richland County's animal ordinance requires humane care, adequate food, water, and shelter, and prohibits neglect. Keeping so many animals that they cannot be properly cared for is enforced as a nuisance and as cruelty. South Carolina's ill-treatment-of-animals statute (SC Code 47-1-40) makes cruelty and neglect a crime.
Richland County's Chapter 5 animal code (rewritten by Ordinance 025-24HR, 2024) requires owners to provide humane care and adequate food, water, and shelter, and animals kept in unsanitary or neglectful conditions are treated as nuisances subject to seizure. Hoarding cases, where the number of animals exceeds an owner's ability to care for them, are pursued under both the county nuisance/welfare provisions and state cruelty law. South Carolina Code Section 47-1-40 makes it unlawful to ill-treat, overload, or deprive an animal of necessary sustenance or shelter; violations range from misdemeanor to felony depending on severity. Richland County Animal Services investigates complaints and can impound animals kept in cruel or hoarding conditions.
Cruelty and neglect under SC Code 47-1-40 carry misdemeanor penalties (fines and jail), escalating to a felony for aggravated or repeat cruelty. The county may seize and impound animals kept in hoarding conditions.
Other ordinances people look up for this city. Green dot = verified primary-source excerpt.
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Richland County has no ordinance banning residential backyard composting. Reasonable home compost piles are allowed, but a pile that becomes a nuisance, harb...
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Richland County has no ordinance specifically permitting or prohibiting artificial turf on residential lots. Single-family yards are exempt from the county's...
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Richland County does not require homeowners to plant native species, but its Land Development Code favors them: on development sites, trees and plants in par...
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Rainwater harvesting is legal in South Carolina and Richland County has no ordinance banning or permitting residential rain barrels or cisterns. The county a...
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Richland County itself imposes no permanent lawn-watering ordinance. Outdoor water use is governed by your water utility and by South Carolina's Drought Resp...
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Richland County Code Sec. 18-4 treats overgrown grass, weeds, dead brush and noxious plants in developed areas as "unsafe and noxious vegetation." The sherif...
See how Richland County's animal hoarding rules stack up against other locations.
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