Dumpster Permits and Placement Rules in Johnstown, CO

The question arrives most weeks, and it always arrives the same way: do I need a permit for a dumpster in Johnstown? The answer turns entirely on one thing, and it is not the size of the container or the length of the rental. It is whose ground the box sits on.

On your own driveway, yard or parking lot, no right-of-way permit is in play at all. That covers the large majority of residential placements in this market. The moment any part of the container sits on public property — a street, an alley, a sidewalk, a public verge — you are in a different conversation with a different desk, and in Johnstown the code is unusually explicit about it.

Below is what the Town of Johnstown’s code, the fire code it has adopted, and the two county road departments actually require, with the section numbers so you can check any of it yourself.

The Johnstown provision that decides the street case

Most municipal codes leave containers to be inferred from a general obstruction ordinance. Johnstown does not. Its code has a section titled Dumpsters, and it says this:

Johnstown Municipal Code § 7-35: “No person shall place, store or maintain a dumpster on any public property unless expressly authorized in writing by the Town” or unless the person is a contractor for the Town acting within the scope of their official function. Placement in violation “is considered a nuisance.” (Ord. No. 2020-182, 9-9-2020.)

Read that carefully, because two words in it do the work. Expressly: an assumption, a verbal nod or a neighbor’s experience is not authorization. In writing: the authorization has to exist as a document. And the consequence of getting it wrong is not a footnote — a container placed on public property without written authorization is characterized in the code itself as a nuisance.

The Town’s code is published at ecode360 and the Town’s own site is johnstownco.gov. Town Hall is at 450 S. Parish Avenue — 970-587-4664.

And the right-of-way permit that sits alongside it

§ 11-23: “All persons seeking to conduct work of any kind in the public right-of-way shall obtain a right-of-way permit from the Town prior to the commencement of such work.” Town employees and contractors may be exempted in writing by the Town Manager.

§ 11-25 provides that on issuance of a right-of-way permit the permittee pays a fee “in the amount set forth by resolution of the Town Council.” The amount lives in the Town’s fee schedule rather than in the code, which means it can be revised without a code amendment. We will not publish a figure for it. Call the Town and ask what it is today.

Chapter 11 also carries the related provisions on encroachments (§ 11-2 and § 11-3), work and conduct in the public right-of-way (§ 11-21), acts in the public right-of-way (§ 11-26) and violations (§ 11-27). If your project touches the street for any reason — a container, a materials drop, a scaffold, a trench — that chapter is the one that governs.

Outside the town limits, there are two different county desks

This is where the Johnstown area stops resembling anywhere else. Johnstown straddles two counties. The historic Parish Avenue core is on the Weld County side; the entire I-25 corridor — 2534, Ledge Rock, the interchanges, the frontage roads and Kelim — is on the Larimer County side. So a container on a county road outside the town limits answers to one of two entirely separate governments, depending on the address.

Weld County Public Works — (970) 400-4000, 1150 O Street, Greeley. The county states that all construction activities within Weld County rights-of-way, whether gravel or paved, and including all public drainage easements, need permits, and describes the covered activity as including occupation, excavation, surveying, location performance or facility construction within county rights-of-way or easements. Note that word “occupation.” A container standing in a right-of-way is an occupation of it. But the county’s page does not name dumpsters or containers, so we are not going to tell you the county requires a permit for one. What we will tell you is that the language is broad, the stakes are the road, and a phone call is warranted. weld.gov.

Larimer County Engineering — (970) 498-5709, 200 West Oak Street, Fort Collins. Larimer issues a right-of-way construction permit for utilities, an access or driveway permit, a special transport permit, and floodplain and private road construction permits, all quoting ten business days for processing, with insurance certificates matching county requirements. Larimer’s published permit documentation does not address placing a container in the right-of-way one way or the other. So we will give you the number and claim nothing beyond it. larimer.gov.

Kelim itself is unincorporated and in Larimer County, which means there is no town permit desk for a Kelim address at all — the county is the road authority. Our county-line guide works through why the address, not the mailing town, is the thing that decides this.

The five-foot rule, which applies everywhere and to every container

Fire code separation is the one requirement that follows the container onto private property, and it is worth understanding because it decides where in your driveway the box can sit.

The Town of Johnstown’s building regulations adopt the 2024 International Fire Code at § 18-61. Two adjacent sections of that code deal with containers:

• § 304.3.4 — dumpsters with an individual capacity of 1.0 cubic yard or more shall not be stored in buildings or placed within 5 feet of combustible walls, openings or combustible roof eave lines, unless the dumpsters are constructed of noncombustible or low heat release materials.
• § 304.3.5 — dumpsters and containers with an individual capacity of 1.5 cubic yards or more shall not be stored in buildings or placed within 5 feet of combustible walls, openings or combustible roof eave lines. No noncombustible exception.

Both sections exist and they do slightly different work. For a roll-off business the distinction is academic, because the smallest container we run is ten cubic yards — nearly seven times the larger threshold. The answer is stable: five feet, always.

Two more provisions from the same chapter are genuinely useful on a job site. § 304.3.3 requires lids on containers with a capacity exceeding 5.33 cubic feet, built of noncombustible or low heat release materials. And § 304.3.1 requires that materials susceptible to spontaneous ignition, such as oily rags, be stored in a listed disposal container and removed daily. Oily rags in an open container is a real cause of job site fires, and it is a one-sentence fix.

Which edition, and who to ask

Here is an honest wrinkle. The Town’s published code adopts the 2024 edition. Front Range Fire Rescue, the fire district that provides life safety services to Johnstown, Milliken and Weld County, has published guidance under the 2018 edition. The five-foot separation is the same in both, and neither the Town nor the district amended Section 304 — their amendments deal with open burning, sky lanterns and placards. So the practical rule does not move. If you are placing a container tight against a structure and want it confirmed, the fire marshal’s office is 970-587-4464.

The Weld County fact that a national company will never tell you

In unincorporated Weld County, the county does not enforce a fire code at all. Its building ordinance states it in one sentence: “The provisions of the International Fire Code shall apply only when adopted by a local fire district and shall not be enforced under this Building Code.”

That is why the county’s adopted-codes list contains no fire code. In unincorporated Weld County, the fire code that applies to you is whatever your fire protection district has adopted — and district boundaries do not follow municipal boundaries. For a rural container placement question out there, the county building department is the wrong phone number. The fire district is the right one.

Digging is a separate question, and the number is two

Setting a container is not excavation and does not require a locate. But plenty of the projects that need a container do involve digging — footings, sewer laterals, fence posts, deck piers, patios — and Colorado’s dig law is stricter than most people assume.

C.R.S. Title 9, Article 1.5 requires that notice of the commencement, extent and duration of excavation work be given “at least two business days prior thereto not including the day of actual notice.” Markings stay valid while clearly visible but not more than thirty calendar days after the locate request’s due date.

Colorado 811 advises allowing three business days, which is sensible padding rather than the legal minimum. Two things to do before you call: white-line the dig area with paint, flags or stakes, and have the address and the scope ready. 811 or 800-922-1987.

There is a specifically local reason to take this seriously. Weld County produces the large majority of Colorado’s oil and gas, and rural properties across this market can have gathering lines, flowlines and tank battery services crossing them that a homeowner has no reason to know about. The regulator is the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission, ecmc.colorado.gov, (303) 894-2100.

What the Town’s waste chapter says about providers

For completeness, because people ask: Johnstown’s waste collection article requires that refuse collection providers operating in the Town obtain and maintain a Town business license (§ 7-64(a)) and carry liability insurance naming the Town as an additional insured (§ 7-64(b)). The Town also provides refuse collection by contract under § 7-61(a), billed with the water bill under § 7-65(a), and does not serve multifamily buildings of three or more units or commercial and industrial customers.

Those are the rules as the code states them. What any particular company’s standing is under them is a question for that company, and every jurisdiction in this market is different — which is the next point.

Every other town is its own answer

This is the part where a national site will quietly assume that whatever is true in one town is true in the next one. In this market that assumption is unusually dangerous, because the towns are not structured alike.

Johnstown, Windsor, Loveland, Greeley, Evans, Erie, Longmont, Fort Collins and Timnath are home rule municipalities, drawing their powers from their own charters under Article XX of the Colorado Constitution, which means they can legislate in local matters beyond state statute — and they are the ones most likely to have their own container ordinances, hauler licensing and right-of-way permits, as Johnstown does. Milliken, Berthoud, Mead, Severance, La Salle, Platteville, Gilcrest, Eaton and Ault are statutory towns operating under state statute.

We have verified Johnstown’s provisions verbatim. We have not verified whether any other town in this service area has its own container ordinance, licenses haulers, or which fire code edition its district enforces. Rather than guess, here are the numbers:

• Town of Milliken, 1101 Broad Street — 970-587-4331 — millikenco.gov
• Town of Berthoud, 807 Mountain Avenue — 970-532-2643 — berthoud.org
• Town of Windsor, 301 Walnut Street — 970-674-2400 — windsorgov.com
• Town of Mead, 441 Third Street — meadco.gov
• City of Greeley, 1200 11th Avenue — (970) 351-5311 — greeleyco.gov

The practical sequence

1. Can it go on private property? If yes, no right-of-way permit is in play. Plan the five-foot separation from combustible walls, openings and eave lines and you are done.
2. If it must go on the street or sidewalk in Johnstown, the Town’s express written authorization comes first (§ 7-35), and a right-of-way permit is required for work in the right-of-way (§ 11-23). 970-587-4664.
3. If it must go on a county road, call the county that owns that road: Weld Public Works (970) 400-4000 or Larimer Engineering (970) 498-5709.
4. If anybody is digging, white-line and call 811 at least two business days ahead.
5. Check the private layer. Homeowners associations, leases and commercial property rules are separate from anything a government requires, and they are the restriction that most often surprises people in the newer subdivisions.

Tell us the address when you call and we will tell you which of those five applies. HJP Dumpster Rental — (970) 427-0341. See service areas, sizes or the FAQ.