Off-Grid Living in Kittery, Maine

I've been digging into what off-grid living actually looks like in Kittery, Maine, and the short version is: this is a fully zoned town, and that shapes everything else.

Zoning. Kittery operates under its Land Use and Development Code, administered by the Planning Board and a Code Enforcement Officer, and it was written to cover all the zoning purposes laid out in Maine Revised Statutes. There's no unzoned rural pocket here where you can just settle on raw land and be left alone. Kittery also layers shoreland and resource-protection overlay zones on top of base zoning, which add restrictions near water. Whether you can simply occupy land without a permitted structure isn't confirmed in what I found, so I'd call the Code Enforcement Office before assuming you can.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. Kittery does have an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) ordinance, handled by Code Enforcement, but that's aimed at secondary units on an already-developed lot, not an independent tiny home or RV as your only, permanent off-grid residence. I couldn't find an official Kittery page confirming RVs or wheeled tiny homes as legal primary dwellings, so treat this as restricted or unclear until Code Enforcement tells you otherwise.

Building permits. Required, full stop. Code Enforcement reviews and issues permits for residential construction, plus things like vegetation removal in shoreland zones. Maine's statewide Uniform Building and Energy Code is also referenced in that process.

Septic and composting toilets. This one's actually straightforward and workable. Maine law requires every municipality to have a Local Plumbing Inspector (LPI), state-licensed and town-appointed, and Kittery's LPI sits inside the Code Enforcement office. Septic permits, including alternative toilet setups other than pit privies, go through that local inspector under the state's Subsurface Wastewater Disposal Rules. No Kittery-specific add-on restrictions turned up.

Greywater. Same state rules (the Subsurface Wastewater Disposal Rules, administered by Maine's CDC Subsurface Wastewater Unit) apply, funneled through Kittery's Local Plumbing Inspector. No town-specific greywater ordinance was found.

Rainwater harvesting. I found nothing, town or state, addressing this directly for Kittery. Genuinely unconfirmed, ask Code Enforcement.

Wells. No Kittery-specific well ordinance turned up. The statewide Water Well Commission standards should apply as the baseline.

Utility disconnection. No outright ban on going off-grid utility-wise, but the Land Use Code's requirement that new development have "adequate public services," combined with mandatory building and septic permits, means you can't just disconnect quietly. Any permitted structure will likely draw scrutiny of your water and waste plans.

Bottom line: Kittery is permit-heavy and zoning-first. Off-grid infrastructure like septic and composting toilets is workable through the normal state-plus-local process, but treat land occupancy and alternative dwellings as things you confirm before you build anything.