Regulations

The Office of General Counsel (OGC) is the lead DCR office for maintaining the department’s regulations found in the Commonwealth’s Code of Massachusetts Regulations.  Among other things, the regulations govern the use of DCR lands and facilities, provide the framework for DCR regulatory programs, and address violations of DCR rules.  OGC coordinates the proposal and promulgation of any new, amended or revised DCR regulations, as well as the repeal of any DCR regulation.  Promulgation of regulations by DCR, including public hearings or meetings and public participation, is always in accordance with the requirements of Chapter 30A of the General Laws.

On this page, DCR facilitates access to its regulations, which have the force of law, however, please note that the regulations provided via this web page are not official versions.  If for any reason you require the official version of the regulation, it is only available through Secretary of the Commonwealth via the State Bookstore. Although we strive to keep all information as current and accurate as possible, when downloading regulations from the DCR web site, the copy you receive may be different from the official version for a number of reasons, including but not limited to (1) the download may have gone wrong and you may have lost information; (2) the document may not print well given your specific software/hardware setup; (3) if you translate our documents to another word processing program, it may miss/skip/lose information; and, (4) the file on this web site may be out-of-date (as hard as we try to keep everything current, please note our disclaimer).