Schenectady, NY Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Added to the Peace and Good Order chapter in 1987 by Ordinance No. 87-67, § 192-25 targets intentional dumping rather than accidental litter: the section requires that the person intentionally throw, deposit, strew or litter the material, or intentionally cause someone else to do so. It reaches two different situations at once, dumping on public property such as a street, sidewalk, square or park, and dumping on private property without the owner's permission, so it also protects a neighbor's vacant lot or yard from being used as an unauthorized dump site.

The material covered is broad: wood, concrete, building materials, debris, junk or similar garbage of any quantity, plus paper, advertisements, cardboard, handbills, paper boxes and other paper waste, and any other offensive material, but the paper and offensive-material categories only count once the load weighs in excess of half a pound, so a few stray flyers will not trigger it while a dumped bag of trash will. Subsection B sets the penalty at up to 60 days' imprisonment, a fine of up to $1,000, or both, on conviction, making it one of the more heavily penalized offenses in Chapter 192.

A separate catch-all penalty in § 192-26 covers any other Chapter 192 offense that does not specify its own punishment, with a fine up to $250 or a civil penalty up to $500, underscoring how much more serious the Council considered dumping to be than an ordinary Chapter 192 violation. Because the section sits in the general Peace and Good Order chapter rather than the sanitation code, it is enforced by the Schenectady Police Department alongside littering and other public-nuisance offenses.