Tallahassee, FL Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

Section 21-485 of the Tallahassee Code of General Ordinances, titled "General prohibitions," is the city's core anti-dumping rule. Subsection (a) forbids burying solid waste anywhere inside the corporate limits except at a state-permitted landfill. Subsection (b) is the operative dumping ban: no person may place any accumulation of solid waste or recovered materials in a street, alley, or other public place of travel, or upon private or public property, except adjacent to and directly in front of that person's own property, and even then the waste must sit behind the curb or behind the back slope of a roadside drainage ditch wherever conditions allow.

Subsection (c) separately bars placing waste in, upon, or near a storm drain or ditch closely enough that it could be drawn in and block the drainage system, and subsection (d) prohibits sweeping, blowing, or washing soil, yard waste, debris, or solid waste into a street, gutter, storm drain, or ditch, with a carve-out for a governmental agency's own maintenance work. Together these subsections reach the classic illegal-dumping scenario: leaving bags or debris on a neighbor's lot, an empty city right-of-way, or a vacant parcel rather than at the dumper's own curb.

, but the city ordinance itself, not just the state law, is what a code enforcement officer cites when writing a case. Enforcement runs through the article's general penalty in section 21-515, and the director of the Department of Solid Waste Services can also suspend collection service to a chronic violator under section 21-494, with an appeal available to the city manager or designee.