Rutherford County, NC Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Section 15-31 does not itself criminalize dumping; that prohibition sits at section 15-24(5), which makes it unlawful to throw, dump or deposit solid waste on your own property, another person's property, a public highway, street, road, park or other public property outside a spot the county has specifically designated for that use. Section 15-31 instead governs what happens once an illegal dump exists: upon notification from the health director, the person responsible must implement effective rat control measures for at least two weeks after closing the dump, if the health director determines that step necessary, to keep rats from migrating onto neighboring land.

About two weeks after any required rat baiting, the dump must be compacted and covered with at least two feet of compacted earth. The responsible party must also carry out erosion control by grading and seeding as necessary, and must post signs marking the site as a closed dump. These are affirmative remediation duties, not optional cleanup suggestions, and failing to complete them after notice is itself a fresh violation of the article. Because section 15-24(5)'s original dumping violation and the section 15-31 closure duties both sit inside the solid waste article, both carry the same misdemeanor exposure under section 15-19, and the county can recover its own correction costs from the violator under section 15-20 if county crews have to do the work themselves.