Field notes / Tulsa

Where a torn-out Tulsa slab is allowed to go

Breaking the concrete is the quick part of a replacement. Getting rid of it is priced by the ton and governed by three different authorities, and every rule involved is published.

Field note, published October 18, 2026. Every source below was read that day.

The rubble decides a large part of the bill

On a replacement quote, demolition and haul-off often sit near the top of the cost column, and homeowners who try to shave it usually reach for the trash cart, the bulky waste appointment or a quiet corner of the back yard. Each of those three has a published rule that says what it will and will not take, and the rules are not close calls.

Volume is why. A twelve-by-fourteen patio at four inches thick is 56 cubic feet of concrete, a little over two cubic yards before anything is broken up, and broken pieces never stack as tightly as they lay. A two-car drive at six inches is several times that.

Not the carts

The City's refuse service is sized for household trash and says so. The Tulsa refuse welcome packet, retrieved October 18, 2026, offers gray carts in three sizes, 32, 64 and 96 gallons, with maximum weights of 80, 160 and 240 pounds, and instructs residents not to put hazardous chemicals, batteries, paints, medical wastes, oil, liquids, radioactive materials or construction debris in either the gray or the blue cart.

Extra refuse stickers exist for bagged overflow, sold in sheets of five at QuikTrip or City Hall, and they do not change what the cart may hold. Carts go out on the collection day and come back off the curb within twelve hours of pickup, which is also a hint about what the hauler expects to lift.

Bulky waste takes a wheelbarrow load, not a driveway

The City's bulky waste rules, retrieved October 18, 2026, are more generous and still fall well short of a slab. Among the accepted items is remodeling debris from a resident's own project, capped at one cubic yard and required to be separately and securely containerized. Among the items not accepted is contractor remodeling or demolition debris, with fencing, shingles, wallboard, lumber and siding given as examples. A load that breaks the rules still carries the scheduling fee without being collected.

So the patio above, at a bit over two cubic yards, is already twice the allowance even before anyone asks who swung the hammer. A few bucket loads from a cracked step are a different matter and fit the rule as written.

Check the current fee by phone before you schedule. The bulky waste page we read on October 18, 2026 prints a fee of $10 per 8 cubic yards and, in the same line, an increase to $20 beginning October 1, 2026. Those two statements cannot both describe today, so ask Tulsa 311 which figure is being billed now.

Pickups are scheduled online, through 311 or by email, at least three days before the pickup day, and a cancellation has to arrive by noon the day before or the charge stands. The refuse packet adds who qualifies: utilities at the address in the resident's name, that person living there full time, and a house owned by a corporation or an LLC not serviced by the bulky waste group unless those conditions are met.

The yard waste route is closed too

Concrete sometimes rides out with brush, and the rules anticipate that. The refuse packet's yard waste instructions exclude rock, pipe, lumber, treated wood, trash, dirt and building materials, and reject root balls or trees carrying foreign material such as fence or concrete. The City's code enforcement brochure, retrieved October 18, 2026, points tree waste to the City's Mulch Site at 2100 N 145th E Ave, open 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed on Sunday. That is a yard waste gate, not a demolition gate.

The same brochure closes the other obvious shortcut. Trash, junk and debris cannot be left in the yard, must be disposed of properly, and building materials are listed among the unacceptable items, alongside auto parts, appliances, furniture, tires and tree trimmings. Leaving the pile for later is itself a code question, and a neighbor's call to 311 starts it.

The Neighborhood Dumpster Program is worth knowing about and worth not misreading: the packet describes 30-yard containers available to registered neighborhood groups for cleanup activities and eligible household items. It is a cleanup tool for a street, not a skip for one owner's demolition.

What the state says your broken slab is

Oklahoma's rules draw one line that matters more than any other on a tear-out: clean concrete and mixed debris are not the same material. The Department of Environmental Quality's open dumping fact sheet, the edition marked 1/2026, defines solid waste to include building materials and demolition materials, then says solid waste does not include clean rock, dirt or brick. Dumping, the same sheet says, is the unlawful disposal of solid waste at any location other than a facility permitted by DEQ, the agency investigates all complaints of it, and in almost all instances open dumping is a violation. Its complaints line is (800) 522-0206. Retrieved October 18, 2026.

The rule behind that sits in Oklahoma Administrative Code 252:515, also read October 18, 2026. Section 515-3-2(a)(1) exempts from the solid waste permit requirement rock and dirt fills that receive only uncontaminated rock, dirt, concrete, bricks or solidified asphalt. Section 515-3-3 states the other side of it: except as provided in 515-3-2, no person shall dispose of solid waste at any facility for which a solid waste permit has not been issued by the DEQ.

DEQ's solid waste disposal questions sheet, the edition marked 9/2022, puts the same exemption in plainer words and adds the conditions. Uncontaminated dirt, rock, concrete, bricks and solidified asphalt may go to a location with no DEQ permit if the material is composed of only those things, the landowner consents to the disposal, and the disposal breaks no other state or local law. Its first answer covers a homeowner disposing of household waste on land that person owns, provided the waste does not come from business or commercial activity and the disposal violates no local ordinance and creates no nuisance or hazard.

Read together, those give a working instruction for the day of the tear-out. Keep the concrete clean and it has destinations that a mixed pile does not. Let the reinforcing steel, the form lumber, the empty sacks and the stripped sod ride along in the same load and the exemption's own wording, only those materials, stops fitting.

Where a load in Tulsa County can legally land

DEQ publishes the list of places that hold a permit, which is the only list worth checking a hauler's plan against. Its active solid waste disposal facilities table, last updated December 18, 2024 and read October 18, 2026, names for Tulsa County two municipal solid waste landfills, Quarry Recycling and Disposal Facility under permit 3572042 and North Tulsa Sanitary Landfill under 3572001. In the construction and demolition category it lists APAC-East Quarry C/D Landfill under 3572049. Harley Hollan C/D Processing Facility holds 3572054 and Miller Environmental Transfer Station 3572060 among processing facilities, while Tulsa Recycle and Transfer appears as a transfer station under 3572037. Covanta Tulsa Renewable Energy, permit 3572033, is listed as a waste combustor, and the City of Tulsa Household Pollutant Collection Facility holds 3572057. The nearest listed construction and demolition landfill outside the county is Creek County Landfill, permit 3519020.

That list records permits and nothing else. It does not promise that a gate is open to the public, that it accepts concrete this month, or what it charges. Ask the person hauling your rubble for the name and permit number of the destination, check it against the list, then let the facility quote its own terms.

The construction and demolition category exists because of a definition in the same chapter of the code: construction/demolition waste means asbestos-free waste from construction or demolition projects that may include metal, concrete, brick, asphalt, glass, roofing materials, limited amounts of packing materials, sheetrock or lumber. A tear-out that mixes slab with mesh and forms is that definition almost word for word, which is why it belongs at a facility permitted for it.

Two numbers on a weighed ticket

A scale ticket from a permitted site carries more than one charge. DEQ's questions sheet states that the state disposal fee is currently set at $1.25 per ton of waste received at the landfill, charged over and above the tipping fee the landfill sets for use of the site, and that the landfill keeps 12.5 cents per ton of it for administrative costs. A load weighing under a ton pays proportionally less. Deliver your own waste and you still owe it. Take it to a transfer station and that station collects it too, because it will owe the fee when the load finally reaches a landfill.

None of that makes disposal expensive by itself. It does mean a disposal line quoted as a single round figure is someone's estimate of a weight, which is the thing worth asking about in the driveway cost note.

Keeping it on the lot is its own permit question

The appealing idea of burying the broken slab in a low corner of the yard runs into Tulsa's rules before it meets the state's. The City's residential building guidelines, dated 1/1/2025 and retrieved October 18, 2026, apply the grading and drainage plan requirement to any development, redevelopment, building, excavating, grading, regrading, paving, land filling, berming or diking of any property within the City, and require that a property accept and convey drainage without causing damage to the properties next to it.

If the low corner is in a regulatory floodplain, the City's flood control pages, retrieved October 18, 2026, state that a floodplain watershed development permit must be obtained before commencing construction, landfill or excavation there. And DEQ's own household exemption, as quoted above, holds only while the disposal violates no local ordinance. Three authorities, one answer: ask first, fill second.

What dumping it somewhere quiet costs

The enforcement side is published as well. DEQ's illegal roadside dumps fact sheet, the edition marked 1/2025 and read October 18, 2026, puts enforcement of the laws against roadside dumping with the county sheriff, notes that any full-time peace officer who witnesses illegal dumping may issue a ticket to the offender on the spot, and states that fines can range from $200 to $1,000 a day along with the requirement to clean up the area. Two pieces of evidence carrying a person's name and address, collected at the site by a full-time peace officer, can be used by the district attorney to prosecute. The sheet also records that no state funds are available for cleaning up illegal roadside dumps, which is why the cleanup order follows the fine.

For an owner, the exposure is simple arithmetic against a haul-off line on a bid. For a contractor, where the rubble went is a question worth asking before the work starts rather than after a letter arrives.

Six lines that settle disposal in a contract

Who hauls it, the contractor or the owner, and in whose vehicle.
The destination by name, with its DEQ permit number, checked against the published list.
The steel. Whether reinforcing bar and mesh are separated out of the load, and who pays for that handling.
Weighed or fixed. If disposal is billed at the weighed cost, who keeps the scale ticket and when you see it.
Any container in the street. A dumpster standing in the right-of-way brings its own City paperwork, which the driveway permit note sets out.
Nothing stays on the lot unless the grading, drainage and floodplain questions above have been answered in writing.

Where the slab is going out because it dropped rather than because it wore out, the settlement note is worth reading first: a panel that can be lifted generates no rubble at all, and the cheapest disposal is the load you never create. The repair and leveling guide covers which of the two a slab is a candidate for.

Official sources

Before you decide

Questions worth asking

Can broken concrete go in a Tulsa trash cart?

No. The City's refuse packet tells residents to keep construction debris out of both the gray and the blue cart, and the largest gray cart is rated for 240 pounds in any case. Extra refuse stickers cover bagged household overflow, not rubble.

Will the City collect a demolished patio as bulky waste?

Only within narrow limits. Bulky waste accepts remodeling debris from a resident's own project up to one cubic yard, separately and securely containerized, and refuses contractor remodeling or demolition debris. A twelve-by-fourteen patio at four inches is already about two cubic yards.

Is it legal to bury an old slab in the back yard?

State rules leave room for it: clean concrete is exempt at a rock and dirt fill, and a homeowner may put household waste on land that person owns, provided no local ordinance is broken. In Tulsa, filling, grading and excavating bring the City's grading and drainage requirement, and a watershed development permit applies in the floodplain.

What does dumping concrete illegally cost in Oklahoma?

DEQ's roadside dumping sheet records fines ranging from $200 to $1,000 a day plus a requirement to clean up the area, with enforcement by the county sheriff and tickets issuable on the spot by any full-time peace officer.

What should a quote say about hauling the concrete away?

The destination by name and DEQ permit number, whether the reinforcing steel is separated out, and whether disposal is billed at a weighed cost or a fixed figure. A weighed ticket carries the facility's tipping fee plus the state's $1.25 per ton disposal fee.