Off-Grid Living in Sharkey County, Mississippi

I'll be upfront: Sharkey County, Mississippi is one of those places where the paper trail runs thin, and that's actually useful information in itself. Let me walk through what I found.

Zoning. Mississippi doesn't have a statewide zoning code, that's a county-by-county (or town-by-town) decision. When I looked at Sharkey County's own official website, the departments page lists only Emergency Management, Finance, Fire Services, Purchasing, Road, and Sanitation. No Planning or Zoning Department shows up anywhere. That's consistent with how a lot of small rural Delta counties operate, with no comprehensive zoning ordinance covering the unincorporated county. I couldn't find a county zoning ordinance on Municode, eCode360, or the county's own site. The towns inside the county, Rolling Fork, Anguilla, and Cary, could each have their own zoning rules within town limits, separate from the open county, so if your land is inside one of those towns, check with that town directly.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. I found nothing on the county's official site addressing tiny homes on wheels or long-term RV living. Mississippi has no statewide law on this either, so it defaults to local discretion, and for unincorporated Sharkey County that discretion doesn't appear to be written down anywhere public.

Building permits. Mississippi has no mandatory statewide residential building code, and since the county's department list doesn't include a Building Department, my read is that the unincorporated county likely isn't enforcing one. I did see third-party permit-tracking sites mention Sharkey County has multiple "jurisdictions," which likely just means the towns handle their own permitting separately, but that's not an official source, so treat it as a lead, not a fact.

Septic and composting toilets. This one is solid: Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) regulates on-site wastewater statewide, and Sharkey County is explicitly covered by an MSDH regional office. You'll need a soil/site evaluation and MSDH sign-off for a septic system, tied to a required permit before you can get a water meter.

Greywater. No separate county rule exists; it falls under the same MSDH on-site wastewater framework as septic, meaning it's not a free-for-all, it's regulated alongside your wastewater system design.

Rainwater harvesting. Nothing in county records restricts it. Mississippi's default (no permit needed for typical barrels or cisterns) applies.

Wells. MSDH ties well/water service into the same site evaluation process as septic, and MDEQ handles permitting for larger water withdrawals. No Sharkey-specific well ordinance turned up.

Utilities disconnection. No county rule found either way. If a town like Rolling Fork has adopted a residential code, that might indirectly require grid connection, but that's not confirmed for the unincorporated county.

Bottom line: absence of documented rules isn't a green light, it means you need to call the county directly and ask, because that's genuinely the only way to know for sure here.