Off-Grid Living in Saline County, Illinois

I'll be upfront: this one was tougher than most. I went looking for Saline County, Illinois's own zoning, building, septic, and well rules, and I kept running into unrelated places with the same name (Saline County, Kansas, Saline County, Nebraska, even the City of Saline, Michigan) cluttering the search results. The county's official homepage exists, but I couldn't find live sub-pages for zoning ordinances, building permits, or a health department septic/well program with actual rule text. So a lot of what follows is "here's the Illinois state baseline, and here's who to call to get the Saline-County-specific answer."

Zoning and land use. I could not confirm whether Saline County has a comprehensive zoning ordinance covering raw land, or how it treats off-grid occupancy. Illinois counties are allowed to zone but aren't required to statewide, so this genuinely varies by county, and I just don't have Saline County's own text in hand. Call the county to ask directly.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. No official county document turned up addressing minimum house size, tiny homes, or living in an RV full-time. Unconfirmed, default to asking the county building/zoning office.

Building permits and codes. Illinois adopted a statewide code effective under the Capital Development Board, but whether Saline County administers permits under that code or has its own local amendments wasn't something I could verify from an official county page.

Septic and composting toilets. Here I have solid state-level footing. The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) regulates private sewage disposal systems statewide, including septic tanks, seepage fields, and small discharge systems, and it licenses the contractors who install and pump them. IDPH also notes that more than 90 local health departments act as the actual permitting agents on the ground. I wasn't able to confirm Saline County Health Department's specific local process, so plan to call them once you're routed there through IDPH's directory.

Greywater. Not confirmed at either the state or county level. This is a genuine gray area (no pun intended); ask the local health department before you plumb anything.

Rainwater harvesting. No state or county rule against it turned up in my research, but I also found nothing explicitly authorizing or regulating it, so I'm marking it unclear rather than assuming it's fine to do at any scale.

Private wells. Illinois runs a statewide Water Well Construction Code through IDPH, and other Illinois counties (like Lake County) issue permits through their local health departments under that code. I'd bet Saline County follows the same pattern, but I couldn't locate their specific well-permitting page to confirm it.

Utility disconnection. No Saline County ordinance requiring grid, water, or sewer hookup showed up in my search. Unconfirmed either way; this typically lives inside zoning/occupancy rules if it exists at all.

Bottom line: for the state-regulated stuff (septic, wells) you're on reasonably solid ground going through IDPH and your local health department. For anything zoning- or building-code-specific to Saline County, you really do need to call the county directly, because I could not verify it from an official source.