Washington County, UT Sidewalk & Pedestrian Rules: Obstruction Rules (2026)

Section 7-3-5 sits in Title 7, Chapter 3, County Power to Acquire, Construct and Control Roads and Rights of Way (Ord. 2024-1248, effective January 16, 2024), which gives Washington County broad authority under section 7-3-1 to purchase, design, construct, maintain, control, and manage county roads and rights-of-way, and to vacate or abandon them by ordinance. Subsection 7-3-5(A) bars parking or leaving unattended construction materials, equipment, vehicles, attachments, or trailers in the public road or right-of-way, or within thirty feet of an intersection or blind curve, and this rule runs year round, distinct from the winter-only plowing obstruction rule in Chapter 4.

Subsection 7-3-5(B) separately bars private improvements, meaning anything a property owner builds or places, from being constructed in the county road or right-of-way; the county owes no compensation if it damages an unlawful private improvement while clearing it. Under subsections 7-3-5(C) and (D), if county equipment is damaged by a private obstruction the owner or violator is liable for that damage, while the county is not liable for damage it causes to private property while removing an obstruction it lawfully cleared. In every case, the county may remove the obstruction itself and charge the removal cost to the property owner, recording it as a lien against the adjacent property if the owner does not pay.

Because Chapter 3 does not set out its own criminal penalty, a violation of section 7-3-5 falls back on the countywide general penalty at section 1-4-2(C)(2): any act declared unlawful in the county code without a specified punishment defaults to a class B misdemeanor, carrying a fine of up to $1,000 under section 1-4-1(D)(1).