Off-Grid Living in Macomb County, Michigan

I've been digging into what off-grid living actually looks like in Macomb County, Michigan, and the short version is: it's a tale of two authorities. Macomb County itself has no countywide zoning ordinance. That job belongs to each city and township under Michigan's Zoning Enabling Act, so whether you can put a tiny home, cabin, or RV on raw land depends entirely on where in the county that land sits. Macomb Township, for instance, requires a Certificate of Zoning Compliance before any structure can be occupied or changed. Other townships and cities will have their own versions of this. There's no way around it: you have to call your specific municipality.

Where the county does step in directly is environmental health, through the Macomb County Health Department (MCHD). This is the part of the picture that applies the same way no matter which township you're in. If you're planning a septic system, MCHD's onsite sewage regulation is in force across all of Macomb County. You need a septic permit before you can even get a building permit, and building ahead of that permit is treated as a violation of the sanitary code. The county also requires a reserve drainfield area for future replacement, with no exceptions granted.

That same MCHD sewage rule prohibits discharging raw sewage anywhere except a public sanitary sewer or a "functioning onsite sewage disposal system." That phrase matters if you're dreaming of a fully off-grid setup with a composting toilet or greywater reuse system, because I couldn't find any official Macomb County page that specifically blesses composting toilets, and greywater from sinks, showers, and laundry looks like it falls under the broad "sanitary sewage" definition that has to go to an approved system. I'd call this unconfirmed rather than settled, and I'd get MCHD's environmental health staff on the phone before building anything unconventional.

Wells work the same way: countywide MCHD jurisdiction, a digital site plan required with your permit request, and siting that has to follow the state's Well Construction Code separation distances from contamination sources. Water samples get processed through the Michigan EGLE Drinking Water lab.

Rainwater harvesting looks like the easiest yes here. I found no Macomb County ordinance restricting it, so this seems to rest on Michigan's more permissive state-level framework, though I couldn't confirm whether any individual township adds its own wrinkle.

Building permits themselves are strictly a local matter too. Macomb County's Department of Roads only issues permits for work within county road rights-of-way, like driveway approaches, not general construction. Your city or township building department is the actual gatekeeper for that.

Put it all together and full utility disconnection in Macomb County isn't explicitly banned, but between the septic/well permitting requirements and local occupancy rules, it's genuinely hard to do a true off-grid build here without running into at least one of those systems.