Carroll County, MD Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

01 defines OPEN BURNING as combustion of any material lacking controlled combustion air, an enclosed containment device, or control of the gases released, which covers a backyard trash fire or burn barrel as much as a bonfire. 03(J) states plainly that no person shall use open burning as a means of solid waste management in the county unless permitted by the appropriate state or local regulatory authority, meaning residents cannot burn household trash, packaging, or other solid waste to avoid hauling it to a licensed facility without first securing that permit.

08(D) prohibits any fires or open burning at county solid waste facilities altogether, with no permit exception listed for facility property. 03(G) and (H) reinforce the same policy from the other direction, barring delivery of any waste that is smoking, smoldering, or burning to a county facility and requiring immediate notice to the Department of Public Works and the police and fire departments if a load must be dumped in transit because it is on fire. Read together, these sections make Carroll County's open-burning law a solid-waste rule rather than a general fire-code burn ban: it targets burning as a disposal method and at county facilities, and any other permit for agricultural, recreational, or land-clearing burning runs through separate channels this chapter does not itself set out.