Gaithersburg, MD Fire Regulations: Outdoor Burning (2026)

City Code Sec. 19-6, found in Chapter 19 (Streets and Sidewalks), Article I, states flatly that no person may burn leaves, trash, rubbish, weeds or any other substance in any roadway, gutter or public right-of-way in the city. O. 1957, sec. 7, § 1, and has stood unchanged since, making it one of the older surviving prohibitions in the code. It sits directly alongside the city's other right-of-way housekeeping rules: Sec. 19-2 bars depositing mud, earth or other material onto rights-of-way or into drains, and Sec.

19-3 requires adjoining landowners to remove material washed from their land onto a right-of-way, so the burning ban functions as part of a broader scheme keeping streets, gutters and drains clear of debris and hazards. Because the ban is written to the location, any roadway, gutter or public right-of-way, rather than to the person's property line, it reaches burning done at a curb, in a street gutter, or in the public strip between a sidewalk and the street, even if the fire is started by a resident clearing yard waste from their own adjoining lot.

The article does not carve out a seasonal or permitted exception for right-of-way burning; anyone wanting to dispose of yard waste by fire is directed instead to the city's standard trash and yard-waste collection rather than to any open-burning permit under this article.