Dallas, TX Environmental Rules: Stormwater Management (2026)

Sec. ' Subsection (b) lists 18 narrow defenses to that offense, covering things like firefighting water, agricultural stormwater runoff, uncontaminated groundwater infiltration, individual residential car washing, and swimming pool water that has been dechlorinated to below one milligram per liter of total chlorine residual and meets several other purity conditions; none of those defenses apply once the director has determined the discharge is a pollutant source and given the discharger written notice under Subsection (c). Subsection (f) then bans specific discharges outright regardless of any defense, including oil or motor vehicle fluid, industrial or hazardous waste, domestic wastewater or septic and grease trap waste, garbage and yard waste, wastewater from commercial vehicle washing or fleet maintenance, ready-mixed concrete or asphalt residue, and runoff from animal pens or kennels.

Subsection (g) separately criminalizes discharging 'a harmful quantity of sediment, silt, earth, soil, or other material' from clearing, grading, or excavating, tying the construction-site erosion rules directly to this prohibition. The article is administered by the Trinity Watershed Management program on behalf of the director of Dallas Water Utilities, who enforces the city's NPDES and TPDES stormwater permits, and the burden of proving a discharge is uncontaminated or falls within a listed defense rests on the discharger, who must submit a certified laboratory analysis to the director in any civil or criminal proceeding under Subsection (d).