Grays Harbor County, WA Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

The requirement appears in Chapter 8.20, Recreation Vehicles and Camping, which the Grays Harbor County health department administers for every licensed park in the unincorporated county. Section 8.20.040(G) requires operators to keep grounds, buildings and structures free of insect and rodent harborage and infestation, using extermination methods the health authority approves. Storage areas for lumber, pipe and other building materials must keep those materials at least one foot off the ground to deny rodents cover, and any exterior opening in or beneath a structure must be screened with wire mesh or another suitable material wherever infestation risk exists. Parks must also control brush, weeds and grass to prevent tick and chigger harborage and stop the spread of ragweed, poison ivy and poison sumac. These duties sit alongside the park's refuse-handling rules in subsection F, which require fly-tight, watertight, rodent-proof containers within one hundred fifty feet of every space.

The health authority, Grays Harbor County Environmental Health, issues and can suspend the operating license under § 8.20.060 if an inspection finds uncorrected rodent-control violations, following the notice-and-hearing process of § 8.20.080. An operator who fails to correct cited conditions within the time the health authority sets faces license suspension, and any violator of these rules is subject, on conviction, to a fine of not less than twenty-five dollars nor more than one hundred dollars, with each day of noncompliance a separate violation. Because the county has no general residential rodent-control chapter, the same infestation on ordinary residential property outside a licensed park falls to the general nuisance-abatement process in Chapter 8.40 rather than to a dedicated pest ordinance.