Off-Grid Living in Highland, Maine

I'll be upfront: Highland Plantation is an unusual case, and it's worth understanding why before you make any off-grid plans there.

Highland isn't a regular incorporated town with its own zoning board. It's a "plantation," a minor Maine civil division, and as of 2025 it voted at its annual town meeting to repeal its own comprehensive plan and land use ordinance. Local officials then petitioned to hand land-use authority back to the state. The Maine Land Use Planning Commission (LUPC) accepted, adopted rulemaking in August 2025, and updated its zoning map and Chapter 10 rules for Highland in February 2026. Practically, that means there's no town planning board or code enforcement officer running the show here anymore, the LUPC is your permitting authority, and Highland's own government page even directs residents to the state agency rather than handling it in-house.

For zoning and raw land use, you're working within LUPC subdistricts (things like Residential Development, General Management, and Commercial-Industrial) rather than a town ordinance. Check the current LUPC zoning map for Highland before you buy or build, since the subdistrict boundaries were just redrawn.

On dwellings, tiny homes, and RVs as permanent residences, I couldn't confirm a Highland-specific rule. LUPC's Chapter 10 covers camps, dwellings, and nonconforming structures generally, but I'd call LUPC directly to ask how they'd classify your specific plan.

Building permits run through LUPC too. Their permit process pulls in other approvals as conditions, things like subsurface wastewater disposal approval, a Maine DOT driveway entrance permit, and a physical E-911 address from the county. If you're expanding a nonconforming structure, that also needs its own permit with added limits, so don't assume grandfathered structures are free to grow.

Septic and composting toilets fall under Maine's statewide Subsurface Wastewater Disposal Rules, administered by DHHS/Maine CDC and enforced locally by a plumbing inspector. New, expanded, or replacement systems generally need a permit prepared by a licensed site evaluator or engineer, though there are some exceptions for replacement tanks and certain alternative toilets. Greywater systems ride on these same state rules, there's no separate Highland greywater ordinance.

Rainwater harvesting and fully utility-disconnected living are both areas where I found no explicit Highland or LUPC rule one way or the other. That's not the same as "prohibited," it just means nobody's written a specific rule, so ask LUPC directly before you count on it.

Wells are governed by Maine's statewide Water Well Commission framework; LUPC's Chapter 10 references water supply standards for development permits, but I didn't find Highland-specific well-siting rules beyond that state baseline.

Bottom line: this is a place in transition, and the state, not a town office, now holds the pen on land use decisions.