Contaminated Drinking Water: Chemicals from illegal dump sites can contaminate drinking and surface water supplies.

Health Impacts: Dumped materials can cause physical injuries. Appliances can become traps for children. Toxic materials increase human chemical exposure risks. Chemically contaminated airborne dusts cause breathing problems and lung disease.

Disease: Illegal dump sites are breeding grounds for mosquitoes and rodents, which can spread diseases such as Encephalitis, Dengue Feer, Yellow Fever, West Nile, and Zika.

Fire: Illegal dumpsites can ignite from spontaneous ignition or arson. Dump fires trigger wildland fires that threaten public safety, homes, livestock, and wildlife.

Decreased property values: Illegal dump sites can cause property values to decrease and affect the local tax base. Dumping areas are unattractive to commercial and residential developers/buyers and often attract other criminal activities.

Higher taxes and fees: Millions of dollars are spent to clean up illegal dump sites. These costs are passed on to residents and taxpayers with higher service fees and taxes.

Public Safety Hazards: Illegal highway dumps and fallen debris increase vehicle accidents and fatalities.

Animal Injuries: Broken glass, sharp-edged metal, metal wire, and nails in illegal dump sites create hoof and leg injuries to wildlife and livestock. Such injuries can be fatal and lead to a loss of livelihood for ranchers and a loss of game animals for sportsmen.

Animal Poisoning: Every year, wildlife and livestock are lost to chemical poisoning from illegally dumped materials. Even if poisoning is not fatal, animals can abort fetuses, may have long-term health effects, and can pass chemical contamination up the food chain.

Fatalities from Plastic Ingestion: Livestock and wildlife often eat plastic materials, particularly those that are covered in chemicals or materials that are salty or sweet smelling. Animals that ingest plastic materials cannot digest the plastic. This leads to stomach and gut blockage, which is often fatal.

Entanglement: Illegally dumped wire, rope, plastic, and other materials can entangle and entrap wildlife and livestock. Entanglement often results in severe injuries, permanent deformities, and fatalities.

Decline in Tourism: No one wants to spend vacation time in a “trashed out” region. Loss of tourism leads to regional economic and employment decline.

Lower Quality of Life for You, Your Family, and Your Community: Illegal dumping is an environmental and public health hazard that negatively impacts everyone.

Water Contamination: Regional drinking water supplies and surface water are recharged through rainfall. In illegal dumps, chemicals, dust, and harmful materials can move into surface and drinking water through rainfall runoff.

Waterborne Plastic Debris: Illegally dumped plastics do not decompose. Plastics break into smaller pieces, carried by rain and wind into surface and groundwater. Chemical pollutants in the waterway cling to the plastic materials. Aquatic species and birds mistake chemically coated plastic for food and often die because they cannot digest or tolerate the toxins. Plastics and other floating litter degrade wildlife habitats and foul human swimming areas.

Oxygen Depletion: Rotting litter and waste in streams can deplete oxygen in the water, which causes the die-off of fish and other aquatic species.

Water Users: Waterways polluted by illegally dumped materials can harm the health of people, livestock, and wildlife that drink the water—and the people that eat what is caught from, watered with, or grown with the polluted water.

Air Pollution and Health Hazards: Dumped fluid wastes dry out and bond with soil particles, which can be carried long distances by the wind. Airborne chemical dust from dumps can impact water, plants, animals, and human health.

Soil Sterilization: Dumped industrial wastes and hazardous materials can contaminate the soil with heavy metals, chemicals, high salts, and other harmful materials—which can kill off soil microbes that plants need to survive.

Vegetation Contamination or Die Off: Chemicals and high salts in illegal dumps can kill vegetation. Some plants accumulate chemical contaminants in foliage, fruits, and roots, which insects and animals then eat. The chemical contaminants can then be passed up the food chain to humans.