Quartzsite's county transfer station takes trash three days a week, and the free BLM camping areas have no trash service

If you are camping free on BLM land around Quartzsite, the county’s Quartzsite transfer station is the obvious place for your trash, and La Paz County lists it as open only Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. Arrive on a Wednesday and you are holding bags until Sunday. We checked the county and BLM pages on November 6, 2026.

What the official pages say

La Paz County’s facility page puts the Quartzsite Transfer Station at 1956 N Central Blvd. It lists Sunday, Monday and Tuesday from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., and Wednesday through Saturday as closed. The phone numbers are 928-916-1253 and 928-855-9441.

The BLM’s free camping areas don’t fill the gap. The Yuma Field Office’s 2024 draft business plan says visitors pick the free 14-day areas for their “no fee/amenity status”. Even for the LTVAs, the BLM’s long-term camping brochure says: “Garbage and sewage must be transported by visitors to the nearest disposal site.”

The La Posa LTVA does list “trash services”. You pay for them with the permit. The LTVA supplementary rules on the Midland page say: “An LTVA permit is required for trash disposal within all LTVA campgrounds.” The same business plan puts the fiscal 2024 trash contract at La Posa at $242,000. That is the service the permit pays for.

The catch

We can’t tell you what a visitor pays at the transfer station. The rate sheet the county links from its landfill page is a scanned 2018 contract exhibit. It lists household trash from “County Residents” as free and says nothing about anyone else. A snowbird from Minnesota is not a county resident on paper. Ask at the gate, or call first.

The hours are worth a call too. The facility page shows no seasonal schedule, so call before a long drive with a full load.

Don’t solve the problem with a BLM trash can somewhere else. Federal rules bar bringing household trash into government receptacles, which we covered in the federal trash rule piece.

What to do

• Plan the week around Sunday to Tuesday. Bag and seal everything, keep it out of the sun, and make one run before 1 p.m.
• Do the math on a short-visit permit. If you also need a dump station and water, $40 buys 14 days at La Posa with trash, dump and water included. Our La Posa season piece covers what else it gets you.
• Mind the clock where you camp. The brochure gives free BLM camping outside an LTVA as 14 days in any 28-day period “unless otherwise posted”, then a move outside 25 miles. The posted sign and the Yuma Field Office (928-317-3200) beat any website, ours included.

For the land outside Quartzsite, start with free camping in Arizona.