Blue Hill, NE Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Section 3-122, Littering, is Blue Hill's illegal-dumping provision. It defines the offense broadly: any person who deposits, throws, discards, scatters, or otherwise disposes of any litter, refuse, waste matter or other thing on any public or private property or in any waters commits littering, unless the property is an area designated by law for disposal and the person is authorized to use it, or the litter is placed in a receptacle or container installed on the property for that purpose. The section separately reaches vehicle and boat dumping: whenever litter is thrown, deposited, dropped or dumped from a motor vehicle or watercraft, the operator of that vehicle or watercraft commits the offense, which lets the city cite a driver even when a passenger threw the material.

The ordinance defines "litter" expansively as all rubbish, refuse, waste material, garbage, trash, debris or other foreign substances, solid or liquid, of every form, size, kind and description, but it carves out the wastes or primary processes of farming or manufacturing, reflecting Blue Hill's agricultural setting. The section traces to Neb. Rev. 01 and 28-523 and was amended by Ordinance No. 414 on 3/7/95. Because littering sits in Chapter 3's Misdemeanors, it is enforced by the police under the § 1-507 sheriff contract and penalized under the chapter's general penalty clause.