Richland, WA Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Section 9.12.055, added to Chapter 9.12, Miscellaneous Crimes, by Ordinance 2022-18 and renumbered under Ordinance 2025-13, targets anyone who buries, burns, dumps, collects, removes, or 'in any other manner' disposes of or deposits refuse on a street, alley, public place, or private property within Richland 'other than as provided in RMC Title 15,' the city's solid waste title governing mandatory garbage collection and container rules. The section carves out one specific exception: maintaining a compost heap on private property is not illegal dumping, provided the heap does not itself become a nuisance.

Anyone convicted under § 9.12.055 'shall be guilty of illegal dumping, a misdemeanor.' Because Title 15 requires most Richland properties to use the city's mandatory collection service, dumping refuse anywhere else, on a neighbor's vacant lot, a public right-of-way, or an alley behind a business, falls outside the lawful disposal path and triggers the charge. Richland Police and code enforcement officers under the Development Services department can pursue § 9.12.055 as a criminal misdemeanor even where the same debris might separately support a civil nuisance abatement action under Title 8, Health and Sanitation.

The ordinance history shows the section growing out of Richland's broader 2022 and 2025 recodifications of Title 9 (Ord. 22-13, Ord. 29-20, Ord. 2022-18, Ord. 2025-13), which consolidated several older miscellaneous-crimes sections, including abandoned refrigerators at § 9.12.060 and cold storage lockers at § 9.12.070, into their current numbering.