Reminder to Bag Fall Leaves for Removal

By: Peggy Berg

With the onset of fall, VaHi residents will once again be treated to the beauty of the seasonal color change – and the challenge of dealing with all those lovely little leaves when they finally fall from their branches.

As you implement your leaf removal plan this year, we’d like to remind you that it’s not only discourteous to your neighbors and bad for our ancient and over-burdened sewer system to blow leaves into the street instead of bagging them for city pick-up, but it’s illegal as well.

In a nutshell, the city requires that all property owners bag their leaves in biodegradable paper bags for pick up. There are penalties – including fines – for failure to bag leaves for removal appropriately. If you do your own leaf clean-up, please bag your leaves for city removal. If a yard service does it for you, please require them to bag the yard waste.

If you’re interested in perusing the applicable city code, follow this link. Enter the section of code you’re looking for in the search box in the upper right hand corner of the page. The applicable sections are:

Section 130-36: Removal of yard trimmings

Section 74-601 through 74-611: Unlawful disposal of litter