Burning brush in central Oklahoma: burn bans and burn permits

Burning a brush pile looks like the cheap way to clear a lot. In central Oklahoma it often isn't an option at all: county burn bans come and go with the weather, most cities require a permit, some don't allow burning inside city limits, and if you're clearing land to build on it near Oklahoma City, the state's rules rule out an ordinary burn pile. Here's how it all fits together, from the state's and each city's own pages.

Burn bans: county and governor

Oklahoma has two kinds of burn ban. County commissioners can declare one for their county, lasting up to 14 days and renewable while conditions last. The governor can proclaim one for a group of counties or the whole state, and it stays until state foresters say conditions have improved; a governor's ban overrides county bans.

Before a county can declare one, its commissioners need a majority of the county's fire chiefs to agree that there's extreme fire danger — either severe drought with little rain forecast and unusually hard-to-control wildfires, or a forecast of 100°F or hotter in the next three days. During a ban, burning trash or anything else that could start a wildfire is illegal, and so are campfires and bonfires unless the county's resolution makes an exception. The agricultural exemption for prescribed burns doesn't cover brush or debris piles. Breaking a county ban can mean a fine of up to $500, up to a year in jail, or both; for a governor's ban the fine goes up to $1,000.

Bans change week to week, so check before you light anything: Oklahoma Forestry Services keeps an official burn ban map for all 77 counties, linked from its Forestry Services page. A Red Flag Warning from the National Weather Service isn't a burn ban, but many fire departments stop issuing permits during one — and if a fire started during a Red Flag Warning gets away, the person who lit it can be considered grossly negligent.

What the state lets you burn

• Under DEQ rules, yard brush can be burned on the property where it came from. That means cut or broken branches, leaves, limbs, shrubs and tree trimmings — not grass clippings, stumps still in the ground, or trash.
• A burn can't start until three hours after sunrise, and no fuel can be added in the last three hours before sunset. It can't create a nuisance or put smoke across a road, railroad or airfield.
• No open burning on Ozone Alert or PM Alert days; in the seven central Oklahoma counties, ACOG sends out alerts by email and text.
• Tires can never be burned. Storm and construction debris — shingles, siding, sheetrock, treated lumber, PVC, wiring — goes to a permitted landfill or transfer station, not the burn pile.
• Whoever burns has to keep the fire on their own land, with firebreaks and enough people and equipment on hand, and stay with it until it's out. A fire department can bill for putting out an escaped burn, and burning legally doesn't protect you from liability for damage it causes.

Land clearing is different

What DEQ calls land clearing is clearing ground to build on or develop it — a building site, a subdivision, a right-of-way. That kind of burn has to be at least 500 feet from anyone else's occupied home, and in the seven Oklahoma City-area counties — Canadian, Cleveland, Grady, Lincoln, Logan, McClain and Oklahoma — it has to use an air curtain incinerator, not an open pile. Routine upkeep is different: brush from maintaining your own property can still be burned on-site where your city allows it, under the rules above. Hauling other people's brush somewhere else to burn is tightly limited too. So if you're clearing a lot to build in the metro, an open burn pile isn't the answer.

City burn permits

Inside city limits, the city's rules apply on top of the state's — and they vary more than you'd think.

When burning isn't an option

DEQ's own advice is to burn as little as possible: it points residents to community drop-off sites for vegetation and to composting, where a chipper-shredder does the most good. Several cities take brush for free or cheap — Norman's compost facility is free for residents, Midwest City runs a free compost site for residents' yard waste, and Stillwater's convenience center takes yard waste at no charge. Most cities also take bundled limbs curbside on bulk days; the rules are in our bulk trash guide, and what happens after a storm is in our storm debris guide.

For clearing a whole lot, the practical choices are hauling it off or mulching it in place. Our land clearing crew clears brush, trees and fence lines and hauls it off in the same trip, and forestry mulching is part of that work.