Dubuque, IA Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

Subsection A of section 6-9-2 bans burning or incinerating solid waste anywhere in the city without the city manager's permission, and defines solid waste broadly to match the Iowa Department of Natural Resources definition, expressly naming wastepaper, boxes, building materials, yard waste and tree stumps and reaching any other material besides conventional furnace or boiler fuel. That solid-waste ban does not reach incinerators already licensed by the Iowa DNR, fire department training burns, outdoor cooking with charcoal or propane, small wood fires consistent with the international fire code's recreational-fire provision, bonfires or regulated prescribed fires.

Subsection B lets the city manager grant limited, specific-period permission to burn yard waste, including tree stumps, but only on the premises where the waste was generated, and only when the city's ambient air quality has met all Iowa DNR standards for the preceding six months, which functions as the city's standing burn ban authority. Subsection C lets the city manager cancel any permitted open burning of yard waste immediately whenever local weather or atmospheric conditions, or any other condition the city manager deems appropriate, warrant it, again without a hearing requirement.

Fireworks, blasting, land-clearing burns, agricultural burns and prescribed burns instead run through the separate permit-and-fee system in section 6-9-3, administered by the fire chief rather than the city manager.