Lane County, OR Environmental Rules: Stormwater Management (2026)

LC 9.010.007 (Illicit Discharge) protects the county's stormwater sewer system, defined as the drains, ditches, channels, pipes, culverts, catch basins and manholes Lane County owns or controls for collecting rainfall and runoff. An 'illicit discharge' is any discharge to that system that is not composed entirely of stormwater, and an 'illicit connection' is any drain, pipe or indoor plumbing tie-in that lets one enter, regardless of whether a government agency previously approved it.

Three prohibitions do the work: no one may place, or allow to be placed, a substance that is harmful to water quality or tends to clog the county stormwater system; no one may let an illicit discharge flow from their property onto a public way or public property; and no one may let a discharge from an illicit connection do the same. The code carves out roughly two dozen everyday non-stormwater flows as not illicit as long as they stay free of pollutants, including individual residential car washing, de-chlorinated pool and hot-tub water cooled for at least 12 hours, lawn watering, and street wash water done without soap or chemicals.

Geographically, LC 9.010.007 applies only outside the Eugene and Springfield urban growth boundaries defined in LC 10.600-10 and LC 10.600-20. Inside those UGBs, the county has instead adopted each city's own illicit-discharge ordinance (Eugene Ordinance 01-12 and Springfield Ordinance 3-10) for the city to enforce, though the county keeps the right to step in if a city can't obtain compliance. A violation is a Class A violation under ORS Chapter 153, and enforcement runs through administrative enforcement under LC Chapter 5 and LC Chapter 15, plus nuisance abatement that can require installing infrastructure to stop the discharge.