General Requirements for Allowable Outdoor Burning

The outdoor burning rule includes the following general requirements for allowable outdoor burning. These general requirements can be found in 30 TAC 111.219.     

1. Notify the Texas Forest Service prior to any prescribed or controlled burning for forest management purposes. Also, you must notify your local area Fire Department (ESD) regarding local requirements.

2. Burning must be outside the corporate limits of a city or town except where the city or town has enacted ordinances that allow burning consistent with the Texas Clean Air Act, Subchapter E.    

3. Burning can be initiated and continued only when wind direction and other weather conditions are such that smoke and other pollutants will not cause adverse effects to any public road, landing strip, navigable water, or off-site structure containing sensitive receptors. For the purposes of the rule, “structure containing sensitive receptors” is defined as follows:      A man-made structure utilized for human residence or business, the containment of livestock, or the housing of sensitive live vegetation. The term "man-made structure" does not include suchthings as range fences, roads, bridges, hunting blinds, or facilities used solely for the storage of hay or other livestock feeds. The term "sensitive live vegetation"is defined as vegetation that has potential to be damaged by smoke and heat, examples of which include, but are not limited to, nursery production, mushroom cultivation, pharmaceutical plant production, or laboratory experiments involving plants.    

4. If the burning causes or may tend to cause smoke to blow onto or across a road or highway, the person initiating the burn is responsible for posting flag-persons on affected roads.    

5. The burning must be kept downwind of or at least 300 feet (90 meters) from any structure containing sensitive receptors located on adjacent properties, unless prior written approval is received from the occupant of the adjacent property.    

6. Burning will be conducted in compliance with the following weather and timing conditions:    Burning will begin no sooner than one hour after sunrise and must be completed on the same day not later than one hour before sunset.

7. The area must be attended by a responsible party at all times during the active burn phase when the fire is progressing.        

8. Burning cannot begin when the wind speed is predicted to be less than six miles per hour (five knots) or greater than 23 miles per hour (20 knots) during the burn period.        

9. Burning cannot be conducted during periods of actual or predicted atmospheric temperature inversions.    

10. Electrical insulation, treated lumber, plastics, non-wood construction/demolition materials, heavy oils, asphaltic materials, potentially explosive materials, chemical wastes, and items containing natural or synthetic rubber cannot be burned.