Yard Waste and Brush Removal in Elizabethtown, KY

The City of Elizabethtown does collect brush, and it is worth reading the rules before you rely on them, because they are drawn narrowly and deliberately. The program takes “debris resulting from trees and shrubs which have been pruned or trimmed at residential and small commercial properties”, at less than twelve inches in diameter and five feet in length, placed within twelve feet of the curb line and not blocking lanes, sidewalks, drainage, utilities or mailboxes. Collection runs on a four-week rotating schedule across four service areas, which changed on 1 October 2024. Larger material has to be delivered by you to the Public Works Facility at 1600 Nicholas Street. Confirm the current rotation with Public Works on (270) 737-7890.

Now the two exclusions that decide whether this page applies to you. The first, verbatim: the service “does not include collection of cut trees and shrubs or debris resulting from the clearing of land.” So a pruned hedge is in and a felled tree is out; a trimmed limb is in and a cleared fence line is out. The second, also verbatim, and it is the one that ends most conversations: “Licensed contractors must remove and dispose of debris from their own work professionally.” If a tree service, a landscaper or a builder generated the material, the City has said in writing that its brush truck is not the plan. Neither of these is state law — they are City program rules, they apply inside the city limits only, and outside them there is no municipal brush collection at all.

The leaf program is a third, narrower thing: fall only, loose leaves at the curb or bagged in clear plastic bags not exceeding 50 pounds, with the City asking you to “separate brush and debris from loose leaves piles.” Mixed piles are not accepted. And the spring clean-up, which runs 30 March to 1 May in 2026 for junk and debris, refuses “construction debris” in writing along with liquids, hazardous materials, tires and automobiles. Between the three programs, Elizabethtown has told its residents fairly precisely what a container is for.

Here is the piece almost nobody knows, and it comes from the Commonwealth rather than the City. Kentucky’s own regulatory definition of construction and demolition debris, at 401 KAR 47:005, expressly includes vegetation: “waste resulting from the construction, remodeling, repair, and demolition of structures and roads, and for the disposal of uncontaminated solid waste consisting of vegetation resulting from land clearing and grubbing, utility line maintenance, and seasonal and storm related cleanup.” In many states, land-clearing vegetation and storm debris sit in their own category. In Kentucky they are, by definition, construction and demolition debris. That is why a cleared fence line, a felled tree and a yard full of storm limbs are ordinary container material here rather than a special problem.

And the weather makes this a recurring job rather than an occasional one. The National Weather Service office for Hardin County is Louisville, and the county’s confirmed events include an EF-1 tornado at Rineyville on 31 October 2018; the region’s benchmark disaster remains the 3 April 1974 Super Outbreak, whose F5 killed 31 people, 28 of them in Brandenburg in Meade County. Winter here is not a snow-depth problem — about five inches a year — it is an ice problem, and a regional ice storm is what brings limbs down across a whole county in one night. Ring the yard on (270) 900-6891.

What The City’s Brush Truck Will Not Take

Sizing For Brush, Limbs And Land Clearing

Green material is bulky and full of air, so the sizing runs toward volume until soil enters the picture. A 20 yard handles an ordinary residential brush job — a big prune, a storm clean-up, a hedge line taken out. A 30 yard is right for land clearing, a felled tree with its crown, or a property being reclaimed after years of neglect, and a 40 only where the site has genuine room to land it. The single most useful thing you can do is cut to length before loading: uncut brush fills a container with air, and a 30 yard box of unmanaged limbs holds a surprisingly small tree. Where the job includes sod, soil, root balls or stumps, those come out into a separate 10 yard loaded flat, because they are dense enough to hit a payload on their own. A 15 suits a small, bounded clean-up. Compare all five on the sizes page.

Burning, Blowing And Where Green Material Goes

Brush jobs put the container in softer places than most, so the ground question comes first. The box still wants a firm surface even when the work is at the far end of the property: concrete, a compacted drive or timber plating, with plywood under the wheels and rear rollers. Hardin County has rain in every month and no dry season, so the field edge that looks solid in September will not be the same in March, and a loaded container that has settled into soft ground is a much bigger problem than a longer barrow run. Wind is the second thing, and the City code names it: § 92.031(B) makes it a violation to let material “that can be blown away by the wind” accumulate other than in a covered container. Leaves, small twigs, hedge clippings and dry grass are exactly that. Load the heavy limbs last so they hold the light material down, or keep a tarp over it. Third, burning, because in a rural county it is the reflexive alternative and inside the city limits it is a nuisance. Under § 92.031(I), burning garbage is a nuisance anywhere in the city, always; burning debris or rubbish is a nuisance “except in an approved incinerator”; and only wood, tree branches and yard trimmings may be burned — with the location approved by the Fire Chief and a permit issued if required, no closer than fifty feet from any structure, monitored by an adult with an extinguishing agent at hand, and fully extinguished before it is left. The Fire Chief may prohibit all burning when conditions make it hazardous. The Elizabethtown Fire Department is (270) 765-2121. Outside the city, ask the county before you light anything. Fourth, keep the load clean and keep it green. Treated timber, fencing hardware, wire, plastic sheeting, pots and bags all turn a clean woody load into a mixed one, and clean material has routes that mixed material loses. Fifth, if the work involves digging — stumps, posts, drainage — ring 811 first. Kentucky 811 wants two full working days, the ticket lasts 21 calendar days, and you hand-dig inside the 18-inch tolerance zone either side of the mark.