2023 California Code › Streets and Highways Code - SHC › DIVISION 1 - STATE HIGHWAYS › CHAPTER 3 - The Care and Protection of State Highways › ARTICLE 5 - Control of Junkyards, Scrap Metal Processing Facilities, and Automobile Dismantling Facilities › Section 746.

746. As used in this article:
(a) “Junk” means old or scrap copper, brass, rope, rags, batteries, paper, trash, rubber debris, waste, junked, dismantled or wrecked motor vehicles, or parts thereof, iron, steel and other old or scrap ferrous or nonferrous material.
(b) “Automobile graveyard” means any establishment or place of business which is maintained, used, or operated for storing, keeping, buying, or selling wrecked, scrapped, ruined, or dismantled motor vehicles or motor vehicle parts.
(c) “Junkyard” means any establishment or place of business which is maintained, operated, or used for storing, keeping, buying, or selling junk, or for the maintenance or operation of an automobile graveyard. This definition includes scrap metal processors, autowrecking yards, salvage yards, scrap yards, auto recycling yards, used auto parts yards, and temporary storage of automobile bodies and parts awaiting disposal as a normal part of a business operation when the business will continually have like materials located on the premises. The definition also includes garbage dumps and sanitary landfills. The definition does not include litter, trash, and other debris scattered along or upon the highway, or temporary operations and outdoor storage of limited duration.
(d) “Scrap metal processing facility” means any establishment or place of business which is maintained, used, or operated solely for the processing and preparing of scrap metals for remelting by steel mills and foundries.
(e) “Automobile dismantling facility” means any establishment or place of business which is maintained, used, or operated by an “automobile dismantler,” as defined in the Vehicle Code, for the buying, selling, or dealing in vehicles of a type required to be registered under the Vehicle Code for the purpose of dismantling such vehicles and for the buying or selling of the integral parts and component materials of such vehicles.
(f) “Special conditions” are any of the following which have occurred after October 6, 1966: (1) physical changes which occur within a state-owned right-of-way which cause a junkyard to become visible, such as the failure to maintain screening within the right-of-way or the reconstruction of the highway, (2) the classification of a highway as interstate or primary, or (3) redesignation of an industrial zone to some other zoning classification.
(g) “Visible” means capable of being seen without visual aid by a person of normal visual acuity while driving on the main traveled way of an interstate or primary highway.
(h) “Interstate highway” means any highway at any time officially designated as a part of the national system of interstate and defense highways by appropriate authority of the federal government.
(i) “Primary highway” means any highway, other than an interstate highway, at any time officially designated as a part of the federal-aid primary system by appropriate authority of the federal government.
(j) “Recycle” means either:
(1) Purchasing junk and moving it to an automobile wrecker or scrap processor, or putting it to some other useful purpose, or
(2) Paying the costs of moving such junk to an automobile wrecker or scrap processor or to a place where it will be put to some useful purpose.
(Amended by Stats. 1977, Ch. 919.)