Clifton, NJ Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Section 261-1 defines refuse broadly to include garbage, offal, rubbish, paper, trash, stumps, junk, debris or other articles of waste material, and Section 261-2 flatly bars depositing, placing, dumping, or allowing or permitting anyone else to dump that refuse on any land in the City, without limiting the ban to public land or requiring proof of who owns the property being dumped on. The section as it stands today is a stripped-down version of a much more detailed 1960s dumping-permit scheme; an editor's note attached to Section 261-2 records that a 1966 ordinance (No.

3729) repealed a dozen companion sections, including a formal permit application and approval process, notice to adjoining owners, inspection of vehicles and equipment, a dead-animal disposal rule and a covered-truck requirement, leaving the flat prohibition in Section 261-2 as the operative rule. Enforcement runs under Section 261-3, last amended in 1988 (Ord. No. 5270-88), which sets the penalty at a fine not exceeding $1,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 90 days, or both, and specifically provides that a separate offense shall be deemed committed on each day during or on which a violation occurs or continues, so an unremediated dump site can generate a new chargeable offense daily rather than a single flat fine.