Sedgwick County, KS Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

A. 21-5815 defines criminal littering in two branches: subsection (a)(1) covers dumping onto any public street, highway, alley, road, right-of-way, park or other public place, or into a lake, stream, watercourse or other body of water, unless a public officer or employee authorized by law directs or permits the act; subsection (a)(2) separately covers dumping onto private property without the consent of the owner or occupant, meaning a landowner who dumps refuse on a neighbor's unincorporated Sedgwick County lot is exposed to the same charge as someone dumping on a county road shoulder.

The statute is an unclassified misdemeanor, not tied to the state's standard class A/B/C misdemeanor fine grid, and instead sets its own escalating schedule: a first conviction draws a fine of not less than $250 nor more than $1,000; a second conviction, $1,000 to $2,000; and a third or later conviction, $2,000 to $4,000. Subsection (d) adds a mandatory nonmonetary penalty on top of any fine: every person convicted must pick up litter for a period of time and at a place set by the sentencing court, so a Sedgwick County or municipal court judge can order supervised cleanup as part of the sentence.

A. 8-15,102, the separate statute addressing material spilling or blowing from a moving vehicle, so a load that escapes a truck is charged under that provision instead. Sedgwick County also maintains its own, narrower dumping rule at Code Sec. 23-261, which makes it illegal to intentionally dump hazardous or KDHE-regulated pollutants where they could reach the county's storm sewer system; that stormwater-specific ban runs alongside, not in place of, the state littering statute.