Chelan County, WA Trash & Recycling: Yard Waste Collection (2026)

Chapter 4.22 of the Chelan County Code, Brush Recycling Program, sets the disposal fees for brush, meaning trimmed limbs, shrubs and yard debris, dropped off at the Leavenworth Quarantine Area Brush Recycling Program site at the Chelan County Public Works Day Pit. Section 4.22.010 charges any load under one full cubic yard the flat minimum brush fee, and charges every cubic yard beyond that at the per-cubic-yard rate; both rates were set at $25.00, effective April 1, 2024, and the fees are stated exclusive of the Washington State refuse collection tax that gets added on top. Because the program targets the quarantine area specifically, established to slow the spread of pests in the Leavenworth fruit-growing area, the fee schedule applies to residents disposing of yard waste generated within that zone.

Section 4.22.020 backs the site with a seventy-five dollar cash bank drawn from the county's solid waste fund (Fund 101) so attendants can make change for customers paying at the gate. The brush program sits alongside, but is legally separate from, the county's broader transfer-station fee schedule for other categories of yard and solid waste, such as compacted cubic-yard solid waste and scrap metal, which carry their own state-tax and county-tax components layered into a different total. Chelan County coordinates all of this disposal capacity through the Chelan-Douglas Comprehensive Solid Waste and Hazardous Waste Management Plan 2023-2028, adopted under Chapter 4.06, which covers the unincorporated county and the cities within it under Chapter 70.95 RCW.

There's no separate curbside brush or yard-waste collection ordinance for the unincorporated area; residents haul debris to the Leavenworth site or a transfer station themselves, or contract with a private hauler.