Mountain View, CA Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

City Code Sec. 16.5 bans dumping refuse in two overlapping ways. First, it is unlawful to throw, deposit, or let refuse collect on any public right-of-way, watercourse, waterway, levee, or bank of a watercourse or waterway, or on any premises whatsoever, except an approved disposal area, meaning even dumping on a vacant lot, whether or not you own it, is prohibited unless the property is a permitted disposal site. Second, and separately, it is unlawful to throw, cast, place, sweep, or deposit refuse anywhere in the city in a way that lets the elements carry it onto a street, sidewalk, alley, parkway, or private premises, which reaches sloppy handling, like an open truck bed of yard debris blowing onto a neighbor's yard, not just deliberate dumping.

The section carries a footnote pointing to Penal Code Sec. 374.3, the state law criminalizing deposit of offensive matter on roads or private property, but Mountain View's own ordinance is what lets the city, not just the county district attorney, cite and prosecute a violation directly. Because Chapter 16's general penalty clause at Sec. 16.0 makes any violation of the chapter a misdemeanor, an illegal dumping citation under Sec. 16.5 is prosecutable the same way as any city misdemeanor, and Sec. 1.7's general penalty structure lets the city attorney instead charge it as an infraction, carrying escalating fines of $100 for a first offense, $200 for a second within a year, and $500 for each additional violation, before a further repeat is charged as a misdemeanor.

A property owner on whose land debris accumulates from someone else's dumping doesn't automatically bear the citation, but the city can still use its nuisance abatement authority under Chapter 25 to compel cleanup of a lot with dumped refuse.