Off-Grid Living in Berrien County, Michigan

I'll be upfront: Berrien County, Michigan doesn't have one master rulebook for off-grid living. That surprises people who assume "county" means one office and one ordinance. Instead, Michigan's Zoning Enabling Act puts zoning authority in the hands of each township, village, or city inside the county, while the county government handles a smaller set of specific, genuinely countywide functions: septic permitting, well permitting, drain/soil-erosion oversight near water, and road cuts. Building code enforcement is delegated locally too, though every township is working off the same state-adopted code set (Michigan Residential Code, Building Code, Mechanical/Plumbing Codes, and Electrical/Fire codes from LARA).

Zoning and dwellings are the biggest "it depends" here. Berrien Township, for example, has its own zoning applications covering things like small accessory structures and agricultural uses, and Berrien Springs, Watervliet, Three Oaks, and every other municipality in the county set their own rules on what you can build, live in, or park on raw land. I did not find a Berrien County-wide tiny-home or RV-dwelling ordinance, which means this genuinely gets decided township by township. If you're eyeing a specific parcel, your first call needs to be that township's zoning or building office, not the county.

Septic and wells are where the county actually shows up directly. The Berrien County Health Department (BCHD) requires a permit before anyone installs, alters, or extends a septic system, and it also permits new wells countywide, including a Private Type III Well Permit process. A Watervliet permit checklist makes clear these two approvals (plus, sometimes, a Road Commission driveway cut permit and a Drain Commissioner soil-erosion permit) are treated as prerequisites tied to move-in, alongside your local building permit.

Greywater and rainwater harvesting aren't addressed in any Berrien-specific document I found. That means they default to the statewide plumbing code baseline administered by LARA, which is generally permissive, but I'd still confirm with your township building department since local interpretation varies.

Full utility disconnection (no grid water, no grid sewer) isn't explicitly banned anywhere I could find, but the permitting process itself creates real friction: county documents describe zoning approval, then septic/well approval, as sequential steps before a home can be occupied. So in practice, going fully off-grid on wastewater and water still routes you through BCHD permits, even if you're never touching a public utility line.

Bottom line: treat the county health department as your septic/well authority, and treat your specific township or city as your zoning and building authority. Don't assume one office speaks for the other.