Off-Grid Living in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana

St. Tammany Parish is one of the more regulated corners of Louisiana when it comes to off-grid living, mostly because it has parishwide zoning (the Unified Development Code, or UDC) where a lot of other Louisiana parishes have none. I'm laying out what I found, but I'd treat this as a starting point for calling the actual offices, not a final answer.

Zoning. The UDC, adopted under state constitutional and statutory authority, applies to all of unincorporated St. Tammany Parish. If you're inside Mandeville, Slidell, Covington, or another incorporated town, that town runs its own separate zoning and permitting, so the parish rules below may not even apply to you. Confirm which jurisdiction your parcel sits in before assuming parish rules govern.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. The parish's Planning and Development Department told researchers tiny homes are allowed, but they get run through the same permitting and site standards as standard homes. Mobile homes and RVs have their own history of tighter regulation, including tying electrical hookup to a sewage inspection permit being issued first. I did not find a parish-specific "tiny home on wheels" category separate from RV rules, so that's a case-by-case conversation with Planning & Permits.

Building code. Louisiana's state-adopted building code (LSUCC) is enforced locally by the Parish Permits and Inspections Department. There's no separate parish building code stacked on top.

Septic and composting toilets. Louisiana requires any occupied structure to connect either to a community sewer or an individual sewage system approved by the state health authority (an LDH permit, historically the LHS-47 form). St. Tammany adds its own layer on top: the parish's Department of Environmental Services runs a recurring inspection/compliance program (the SIP, Sewerage Inspection Permit) through MyGovernmentOnline. I found no parish page addressing composting toilets as a septic alternative, so the default is the state's approved-alternative-system list through LDH.

Greywater. No parish-specific greywater ordinance turned up in my research. The state Plumbing Code's nonpotable reuse provisions are the baseline here.

Rainwater harvesting. Nothing in parish code restricts collecting rainwater on your own property. Worth knowing: there's a state law written specifically for St. Tammany Parish that bars exporting groundwater or surface water outside the parish. It doesn't touch on-site harvesting or use.

Wells. Beyond the standard state well-construction permitting (DOTD rules), the parish requires certification, tied to your Certificate of Occupancy, that an individual water system was drilled by a licensed contractor under proper authorization, or that you're properly connected to a certified central water system.

Utilities/off-grid living generally. Louisiana state law generally protects your right to hook up to utilities, but St. Tammany's occupancy process functionally requires proof of an approved water and sewage setup before a Certificate of Occupancy is issued. In practice, that means going fully off-grid without any water/sewage sign-off isn't something the parish's paperwork accommodates.