Fauquier County, VA Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Section 10-14 of the Fauquier County Code flatly prohibits "open dumps as defined in the Code of Virginia," giving the county's environmental services director and sheriff's office authority to act against any unpermitted dump site in the unincorporated county. Section 10-10(c) separately makes it illegal for a permitted collector to use a Fauquier County solid waste permit to dispose of waste that originated outside the county at the county landfill; a collector caught doing so "shall be guilty of a misdemeanor as provided in section 1-7 of the Fauquier County Code, with penalty as set forth therein." Section 10-11 extends that same misdemeanor treatment to any violation of the solid waste chapter and clarifies that criminal prosecution doesn't block the county from also pursuing a civil action for breach of a landfill use agreement or permit.

Because Chapter 10 doesn't set its own fine amount, the general penalty in § 1-7 applies: a fine of not more than $2,500, imprisonment for not more than thirty days, or both, and each day a violation continues is a separate offense, so an open dump left in place accrues a new offense daily. Enforcement runs primarily through the Department of Environmental Services, with the health department and sheriff's office assisting under § 10-2(a). Anyone illegally dumping trash on private or public land in unincorporated Fauquier County, rather than at a permitted collection site or the sanitary landfill, is exposed to both the criminal penalty and the county's separate civil remedies for landfill-agreement or permit breaches.