Illegal dumping in Los Angeles soars in new year

Reports of illegal dumping, long a source of blight in Los Angeles, are up 36% in the first two months of 2025 compared with the same period last year. Some neighborhoods have seen calls about the practice more than double.

In January and February, the city tabulated 22,046 complaints about illegal dumping, according to publicly available MyLA311 service request data. Last year in that time frame the tally was just over 16,000.

The 2025 count exceeds the number of reports in that two-month period every year going back to at least 2018.

While illegal dumping may bring to mind a few trash bags dropped on a corner, it often means piles of construction debris, or even hazardous waste, tossed by a person or business seeking to avoid paying proper disposal fees. Materials are frequently dropped on sidewalks, in alleys or on vacant lots under cover of darkness.

Communities in South Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley get dumped on more than other areas. In the first two months of 2025, Council District 8, which covers a large swath of South L.A., recorded 3,329 dumping reports; the area with the next highest tally, the Valley’s District 6, has 2,207 calls.

The District 8 count marks a 57% increase over the 2,118 dumping reports in the first two months of 2024.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who has represented District 8 since 2015, has sought to encourage his constituents to report all instances of dumping. His office has worked to promote use of the 311 system, and has installed new lighting in places where people illegally toss materials. 

He is aiming to crack down on scofflaws, including by putting up cameras to record illegal activity.

“This situation is unacceptable,” said Harris-Dawson. “We are going after the big fish—the businesses trying to avoid construction debris and waste removal fees by illegally dumping their trash and hazards in our communities. We are absolutely going to make examples out of them and do it swiftly and very publicly until we shift this culture of anything goes, including profiting at all costs without regard for thy neighbor.”

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Harris-Dawson may have to start in his district’s Hyde Park. The neighborhood has the fourth-highest count in the city this year, and the situation is worsening: The 555 dumping reports in January and February is 127% more than that period in 2024.

Van Nuys has the most reports this year, with 843, an increase of 55.6% from last year.

Festering issue

In addition to the blight, dumping can bring health hazards. KCAL News in December broadcast a report about pervasive dumping across the city, with video showing rats drawn to trash piles on Downtown streets, the result of food vendors tossing their refuse.

The city has long struggled with the problem. In 2021, then-City Controller Ron Galperin issued a report on the subject titled “Piling Up: L.A.’s Illegal Dumping Problem.” It offered suggestions on how the Bureau of Sanitation and other city departments could squelch it. However, little progress has been made, and those caught rarely face stiff penalties.

It is unclear what’s behind the current spike. One possibility is that, with more than 15,000 structures burned in the Palisades and Eaton wildfires, some frustrated (or unscrupulous) people are taking fire detritus and tossing it in another neighborhood just to get rid of it quickly and cheaply. The recent weekly call volume in the city exceeds pre-fire numbers.

There have been no public reports or accusations that debris or burned material has been hauled from any fire zone and disposed of illegally. 

This also could be cyclical, as illegal dumping reports in Los Angeles regularly go up and down. They rose during the pandemic, then eased for a couple years. Complaints increased again in 2024, with a notable spike in the final half of the year. 

Reports have surged even more in the new year. There were 11,722 illegal dumping calls in January, the highest monthly volume since late 2021. 

In October 2023, Mayor Karen Bass issued an executive directive to upgrade the MyLA311 system, which would allow Angelenos to better track dumping and other service requests. That work is expected to be unveiled this year.

How we did it: We examined publicly available MyLA311 service data from Jan. 1, 2018–Feb. 28, 2025. For neighborhood boundaries, we rely on the borders defined by the Los Angeles Times. The city of Los Angeles may update past service requests with new information, or recategorize past reports. Those revised reports do not always automatically become part of the public database.

Have questions about our data or want to know more? Write to us at askus@xtown.la.