Iowa allows backyard burning of residential waste at dwellings of four family units or less, unless a local rule is stricter. That exemption is unavailable inside Des Moines, West Des Moines, Clive, Urbandale, Windsor Heights, and Pleasant Hill, and Polk County still bars burning when AQI is 90 or above.
567 IAC 23.2(3)(f) permits backyard burning of residential waste at dwellings of four-family units or less, and lets local governments adopt more restrictive rules. Statewide, the residential-waste and landscape-waste exemptions are explicitly unavailable inside eleven named cities that include the Polk County municipalities of Des Moines, West Des Moines, Clive, Urbandale, Windsor Heights, and Pleasant Hill. In unincorporated Polk County, backyard burning is still subject to the county's permit system and the AQI-90 no-burn trigger. Residential waste excludes garbage, tires, trade wastes, and recyclable goods or plastics, which may never be burned.
Backyard burning inside a prohibited city, of banned materials, or during an AQI action period is enforceable under the county air-pollution rules and Iowa Code 455B.
Other ordinances people look up for this city. Green dot = verified primary-source excerpt.
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