Off-Grid Living in De Soto Parish, Louisiana

I've been digging into what off-grid living actually looks like in De Soto Parish, Louisiana, and I'll be upfront: this is a parish where the official paper trail is thinner than I'd like, so some of what follows is "here's the state baseline, confirm locally" rather than a confirmed local rule.

Zoning. De Soto Parish's Code of Ordinances lives on Municode, but I could not confirm whether the Police Jury (the parish's governing body for unincorporated areas) has adopted a comprehensive parish-wide zoning ordinance. Louisiana has no statewide zoning statute, so each parish decides for itself. My working assumption is that unincorporated De Soto Parish is unzoned or lightly regulated, while towns like Mansfield, Stonewall, and Logansport set their own zoning inside city limits. Confirm with the Police Jury before you buy or build.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. I found no De Soto Parish-specific rule on tiny house minimum sizes, THOW classification, or RV occupancy. This defaults to Louisiana's statewide construction code baseline (which includes IRC Appendix Q), but local siting and occupancy rules for the parish itself are not confirmed.

Building permits. This one's solid: the Police Jury does run a permit process for unincorporated areas, covering applications, inspections, and approvals, through its services office. Louisiana's Uniform Construction Code sets the statewide floor the parish can't go below. If you're inside Mansfield or another town, you'd go through that municipality's permitting instead.

Septic. Also solid and important: septic systems in De Soto Parish are permitted through the Louisiana Department of Health's Office of Public Health, via a local sanitarian based in the parish health unit. A sanitarian has to visit and evaluate your site before approving your plans. I did not find anything from LDH addressing composting toilets as a substitute for a permitted septic system on a permanent dwelling, so that's genuinely unclear.

Greywater and rainwater. No parish-specific ordinances found for either. Greywater reuse falls under Louisiana's Plumbing Code with restricted fixture types (Louisiana Department of Health authority); rainwater harvesting appears to be permitted under state rules and is treated separately from greywater.

Wells. No parish-specific well ordinance found. This inherits Louisiana's state framework, generally through the Office of Conservation and LDH for water quality.

Utility disconnection. There's no explicit parish ordinance either mandating or forbidding full off-grid living. What actually governs your ability to disconnect is whether you're in compliance with the septic and building permit rules above, not some separate "off-grid" statute. And it matters a lot whether you're inside Mansfield city limits (city rules apply) or out in unincorporated parish land (Police Jury rules apply).

Bottom line: treat this parish as workable for off-grid living, but plan on a phone call to the Police Jury and the parish health unit before you commit to land.