Off-Grid Living in Cyr, Maine

I'll be upfront: Cyr Plantation is one of the smallest, least-documented towns I've researched. With only about 78 residents, it doesn't have a published zoning ordinance, planning board, or building permit page that I could find anywhere online, including its own town site (cyrplantationmaine.org), which offers little beyond contact info. So a lot of what follows is "here's the state default, and here's who to call to find out if Cyr does anything different."

Zoning. I could not locate a general zoning ordinance for Cyr Plantation. Given its size, it's very likely largely unzoned outside the shoreland zone, but I can't confirm that from an official document, so I'm calling it unclear. What I do know for certain is that Maine's Mandatory Shoreland Zoning Act requires every municipality, no matter how small, to have a shoreland ordinance protecting land near water bodies. That's administered locally by the town's code enforcement officer, per the Maine DEP.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. No ordinance addressing minimum house size, tiny homes, or RV living turned up for Cyr. If the town has restrictions here, they'd live in a land use ordinance I simply couldn't find, so confirm with the Town Office directly.

Building codes. Maine law only requires municipalities over 4,000 residents to enforce the Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code (MUBEC). Cyr, at 78 people, is nowhere near that threshold, so MUBEC enforcement there is optional. Interestingly, the state law also says towns under the threshold can't adopt some other building code instead, only MUBEC or nothing. Whether Cyr has opted in isn't published anywhere I found.

Septic and greywater. No town-specific septic ordinance surfaced, so the applicable baseline is Maine's state Subsurface Wastewater Disposal Rules, enforced through the local code enforcement officer under state law. Greywater reuse would fall under that same state framework; I found no town-specific rule either restricting or explicitly allowing it.

Rainwater harvesting. No rule found at either the town or state level specific to Cyr. I'd treat this as genuinely open and worth a direct question to the town.

Wells. No Cyr-specific well ordinance found. Maine's Water Well Commission standards would be the default statewide baseline.

Off-grid utility disconnection. No explicit prohibition found, but this typically flows indirectly from septic, well, and building code enforcement, none of which I could pin down precisely for Cyr.

Bottom line: this is a place where the paperwork trail runs cold fast, and your best move is a phone call to the Town Office before you buy or build.