Pocatello, ID Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Pocatello's illegal dumping ban sits in the same garbage and refuse chapter as its collection rules, at City Code § 13.28.200, titled Garbage Dumping Or Incinerating Prohibited. Subsection A covers the core prohibition broadly: it is unlawful to incinerate garbage, refuse, rubbish, construction debris or ashes, or to dump or dispose in any manner of the same on a vacant lot, on any other private property, or on public property or a public right of way. The section does not stop at intentional dumping either.

Anyone who drops or spills such material, even accidentally, onto private or public property or onto a public street, alley or way is required to immediately clean up any and all such material, so a load that shifts off a truck bed is the hauler's responsibility to remove on the spot, not something the city cleans up later. Subsection B addresses a narrower but related problem: putting refuse into someone else's bin or container. That is unlawful unless the person doing it is the account customer authorized to use that particular bin, or has been given specific permission by the authorized customer, which stops neighbors or non-customers from filling a bin they do not pay for.

This dumping ban works alongside § 13.28.190's ban on burning refuse in city-issued containers and § 13.28.210, which gives the sanitation director or manager authority to take whatever measure is appropriate to abate nuisances connected to the chapter, so an illegal dump site can be treated both as a code violation and as a nuisance the sanitation department can act on directly.