Local Rules

The Burning Ban Reaches Further Than the City Limits

The thousand-foot rule catches people who are certain they live far enough out. It is measured from the boundary, not from town.

The rule in one line

That covers the obvious autumn leaf pile, and it covers the less obvious habit of burning brush, offcuts or packaging in a barrel out the back.

If you live inside either city, there is no version of this that is allowed, no time of day that makes it acceptable, and no size of fire that slips under a threshold.

⚠️ The thousand-foot ring

The part that catches people out, and the reason this article exists.

The prohibition extends to within 1,000 feet of the Champaign and Urbana city boundaries, not just inside them.

A thousand feet is a little under a fifth of a mile. If your property sits just past the city limit sign, you are almost certainly still inside the ring. People who have moved a short way out specifically so they could burn are frequently still covered and do not know it.

Two practical points:

• It is measured from the boundary, not from the built-up area. City limits in this county are not tidy, and they do not always follow the edge of the houses.
• Annexation moves the line. A property that was outside the ring some years ago may not be now.

If you are anywhere near a boundary, check before you light anything rather than after.

Where it is still permitted

To be fair to the question: burning has not been abolished countywide.

There are unincorporated areas of the county, and communities including Savoy, where landscape waste burning is allowed - subject to the relevant local rules and to the state's open-burning framework.

Where it is permitted, the conditions are still real. The county's restrictions cover things like:

• Woody landscape waste being shrubbery branches and stems, with no leaves allowed in that category.
• Burning only on the premises where the waste was generated.
• Not on a road, right-of-way, alley or sidewalk without approval from the highway authority.
• Nothing but ordinary ignition - a match, a propane torch, a commercial lighter, tinder or kindling. No petroleum products or other accelerants.
• Material small enough to burn out completely between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., and extinguished if it has not.

That is a narrower permission than "you can burn out here" implies, and it is worth reading properly before relying on it.

What counts as landscape waste

Broader than most people assume. In the county's terms, landscape waste is essentially any vegetable or plant refuse other than food waste and agricultural waste - trees, tree trimmings, branches, stumps, brush, weeds, leaves, grass and shrubbery.

So the pile of brush from clearing a fence line is landscape waste. So are the stumps. So is the grass from a season of clippings.

What it is not: construction timber, treated lumber, fencing, pallets, packaging, furniture or anything painted or finished. Burning those is a different and more serious matter everywhere, permitted area or not.

The alternatives the County actually recommends

Worth repeating, because two of them cost nothing and genuinely work:

• Shred leaves while mowing and leave them on the lawn. They break down and feed the grass.
• Mulch clippings and shredded leaves around shrubs and garden plants, or build an on-site compost pile.
• Put landscape waste out for collection by a private hauler during regular or special collection.
• Take it to a landscape waste facility. In this county that means the Landscape Recycling Center, 1210 E. University Avenue, Urbana, (217) 344-5323 - year round, for a fee.

And inside the city limits, the free seasonal yard waste collection handles bagged leaves and small bundled branches at no charge.

Woody material and the two-inch problem

Here is where the free options stop and the reason people reach for a match in the first place.

The City's seasonal collection takes branches no more than 2 inches in diameter and 3½ feet long, bundled with non-metallic twine. That is a genuinely small branch.

So a real job - taking down a storm-damaged limb, clearing an overgrown fence line, removing a tree - produces a pile where:

• most of the material is over the limit,
• stumps and root balls are excluded outright,
• and cutting everything to spec and bundling it takes longer than the removal did.

Historically people burned it. In the cities and the thousand-foot ring, that option no longer exists.

Why a container is usually simpler

• No size limit. Trunk sections, stumps and root balls all go in - tell us in advance, because they are dense and awkward.
• No cutting to spec. Cut it down enough to load, not to a two-inch standard. Do cut it down though - a tree loaded whole takes three or four times the space.
• No bundling, no twine, no bags.
• No season. The City program runs twice a year; storms do not.
• It works outside the city limits, where there is no program at all.
• Mixed loads are fine. A fence line clearance is brush, treated posts, wire and old concrete - which is four different disposal answers, or one container.

Typical sizing: light brush and prunings, a 15 or 20 yard. A mature tree removal, a 20 or 30. Stumps and root balls, tell us first. A landscape rebuild with soil and rock, a 10 yard part-filled, because that material is far heavier than it looks.

A short checklist

• Burning is prohibited in Champaign and Urbana, full stop
• ⚠️ And within 1,000 feet of those city boundaries - measured from the line
• Garbage buildup is separately prohibited in the City
• Some unincorporated areas and communities including Savoy do permit it
• Where permitted: on-site only, no accelerants, out by 6 p.m.
• Woody landscape waste means branches and stems - no leaves in that category
• Never burn treated timber, fencing, pallets or anything finished
• Free alternatives: mulch it, compost it, or bag it for the seasonal collection
• Landscape Recycling Center in Urbana takes woody material year round for a fee
• Check before you light anything near a boundary - annexation moves the line