A COTERIE OF OAKLAND political big wigs gathered at City Hall on Monday to praise the passage of a new ordinance that increases penalties for illegal dumping and expands efforts to clean up city streets. 

The amendments to Oakland’s illegal dumping law were sponsored by Mayor Barbara Lee and City Councilmember Zac Unger and passed unanimously by the City Council last week. 

“Every single Oaklander deserves clean, safe and healthy neighborhoods and streets,” Lee said during a news briefing about the new rules and other efforts the city is pursuing to combat illegal dumping. “Everyone deserves to live in dignity and each neighborhood needs to be dignified,” she said. 

The ordinance more than doubles the fines for dumping trash on Oakland streets, parks, sidewalks and other spaces to $1,500 for the first offense, $3,000 for the second and $5,000 for the third. 

Also, if a person is caught dumping illegally multiple times on private property within a 10-year period, they could face triple the initial civil penalties.  

The ordinance also makes it a crime for anyone who owns a car to use it or allow it to be used for illegal dumping and for people to haul trash without a license plate on their vehicle.

Oakland City Councilmember Zac Unger, along with other city and nonprofit leaders, at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, April 20, 2026. A press conference was held to praise the passage of a new ordinance that increases penalties for illegal dumping and expands efforts to clean up city streets. (Kiley Russell/Bay City News)

“Oakland isn’t trash, so don’t trash Oakland because we’re coming to get you,” Unger said. 

The ordinance also seeks to prevent illegal dumpers from pinning their crimes on the city’s homeless residents by making it clear that garbage generated by people living in encampments isn’t defined as illegal dumping under the new rules. 

The exemption doesn’t apply to “bulky items, upholstered furniture, hazardous waste, construction or demolition debris, or waste matter brought into the encampment by persons who do not reside in the outdoor encampment,” according to the legislation. 

Lee said it’s important to remember that much of the dumping around encampments comes from people who don’t actually reside in them. 

“They don’t care about the dignity of the people who are living there,” she said. 

“Oakland isn’t trash, so don’t trash Oakland because we’re coming to get you.”

Zac Unger, Oakland councilmember

Lee and Unger also praised Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley and his Policy Director Erin Armstong, who are working on a similar countywide ordinance and developed draft language that all the county’s cities can use to adopt complementary new rules about illegal dumping. 

“We recognize in this office that illegal dumping knows no bounds and if Oakland starts cracking down or we start cracking down in the unincorporated area, that the dumpers are just going to move,” Armstrong said. “But if we all have the same accountability, if we all have the same fines and the same ways of holding people accountable, then we can make a real difference.”

AI joins fight against dumping

In addition to the new ordinance, city officials praised the council’s decision to adopt a $150,000, one-year pilot program using AI-empowered drones to scout out, map and track illegal dump sites. 

Lee said the program was approved by the city’s Privacy Commission and she other officials assured Oaklanders that the technology will use rigorous privacy safeguards and will allow the city’s Department of Public Works to proactively identify and clean up trash piles without solely relying on citizen complaints and reporting via 311. 

The drones are from a San Francisco company called Aerbits and will operate separately from the city’s existing network of 36 illegal dumping surveillance cameras that are mounted at various locations.

“We will not be capturing license plates or any personal data with the Aerbits technology,” said Kristin Hathaway, Oakland’s assistant director of Public Works. “It’ll just be looking at garbage.”

Oakland City Councilmember Kevin Jenkins, along with other city and nonprofit leaders, at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, April 20, 2026. A press conference was held to praise the passage of a new ordinance that increases penalties for illegal dumping and expands efforts to clean up city streets. (Kiley Russell/Bay City News)

Lee said the city is also lobbying for new statewide legislation, SB 1218, carried by state Sen. Jessie Arreguin, D-Berkeley, that would require that people pay their illegal dumping fines before they’re allowed to renew their vehicle registration with the Department of Motor Vehicles. 

“We all want to build an Oakland where our streets reflect the dignity, pride and the resilience of our community and we know that too many Oaklanders are seeing trash on the streets and illegal dumping in their neighborhoods,” she said. 

City councilmembers Kevin Jenkins, Charlene Wang, Rowena Brown and Ken Houston also attended the news briefing, as did the city’s Director of Public Works Liam Garland.

Kiley Russell writes primarily for Local News Matters on issues related to equity and the environment. A Bay Area native, he has lived most of his life in Oakland. He studied journalism at San Francisco State University, worked for the Associated Press and the former Contra Costa Times, among other outlets. He has covered everything from state legislatures, local governments, federal and state courts, crime, growth and development, political campaigns of various stripes, wildfires and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.