Menifee, CA Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

010 bars any person or entity from placing, depositing, throwing, leaving, disposing of, or dumping trash, garbage, waste, debris, refuse, or matter, expressly including rocks, dirt, and demolition or construction waste materials, on any public or private property in the city. The ban applies whether or not the property is owned or controlled by whoever dumps the material there, so a landowner who allows dumping on someone else's land is covered along with anyone who dumps on their own vacant lot without authorization. Two narrow exceptions exist: the property is an approved site for that kind of placement, or the property owner has consented and the material is only temporarily placed in appropriate receptacles awaiting collection and removal.

Anything short of those two conditions is a violation regardless of intent or how long the material sits there. 020 classifies every violation as an infraction and lets the city enforce it through any legally available means, including an administrative citation issued by code enforcement rather than a criminal filing. Critically, the ordinance does not let a violator escape liability by cleaning up: removing the dumped material afterward does not relieve the person or entity of the penalty already incurred for the original dumping. Both sections trace to Ord. 2009-30, adopted May 5, 2009, shortly after the city's 2008 incorporation, giving Menifee its own dumping enforcement tool independent of Riverside County's parallel provisions.