Owensboro, KY Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Owensboro Municipal Code § 26-245 bars any person engaged in manufacturing, processing or delivering materials from letting solid waste escape their premises into the city. Separately, § 26-248 prohibits tampering with, rummaging through or climbing into any bulk container without being the owner or an authorized user, and bars depositing refuse into a privately owned bulk container without a proprietary interest in it. Subsection (d) specifically targets illegal dumping into someone else's bulk container: the violator must remove the material, dispose of it at a state-permitted disposal facility, and submit a scale ticket from that facility to the sanitation manager, proving the waste was actually hauled away rather than left for the city to clean up.

Section 26-249 sets the penalty for violations of §§ 26-246 through 26-248 at not less than $100 and not more than $500 per offense, issued by citation from the code official, who is defined in § 26-243 to include the sanitation manager and property maintenance inspectors. Because a separate offense is deemed committed on each day a violation continues, an uncorrected dumping site can accumulate fines daily until the dumped material is hauled to a permitted facility and the scale ticket is turned in. The department of sanitation, under the director of public works, administers this article citywide within the corporate limits.