Off-Grid Living in Chaves County, New Mexico

I've been digging into Chaves County, New Mexico for anyone thinking about buying raw land out near Roswell and living off-grid, and here's what I found, with the caveat that some of it needs a phone call to confirm.

Zoning isn't absent here. A lot of people assume rural New Mexico counties have no zoning, but Chaves County's Planning & Zoning Department does administer countywide land-use rules for unincorporated territory, separate from the City of Roswell's own zoning. If your land is inside Roswell's extraterritorial zone, it's treated under whatever district it was already zoned before, and you can't rezone until it's formally annexed into the city. Bottom line: check with county Planning & Zoning before you assume you can do whatever you want with a parcel.

Dwellings. If you're placing a manufactured or modular home, the county requires a placement permit, and you need address verification from Planning & Zoning before you can even get the environmental sign-off. For tiny homes or living full-time in an RV, I could not confirm specific county rules either way, so that's a "call and ask" situation rather than something I can tell you is fine or forbidden.

Building codes. Chaves County enforces its own Building Code (the county calls it Ordinance 60), which is essentially the county acting as the local arm of the state's Construction Industries Division, folding in state and national code updates. One important wrinkle: as of the most recent county page I reviewed, the county had temporarily suspended electrical permit applications and inspections. That's the kind of thing that changes, so call before you plan around it.

Septic and greywater are not handled by the county at all, they're state matters. The New Mexico Environment Department's Liquid Waste Program sets the rules statewide (Chaves County hasn't adopted its own wastewater ordinance the way Bernalillo County has), and septic systems, including composting toilet setups that discharge liquid waste, need review under NMED's process. If you're buying property with an existing septic system, state rule requires the seller to have that system evaluated before transfer.

Rainwater harvesting looks fine, there's no county rule restricting it and the state's Office of the State Engineer generally supports on-site rainwater use for domestic purposes.

Wells are the big one to plan around. Chaves County sits inside the Roswell Artesian Underground Water Basin, which the State Engineer closed to new appropriations back in 1937 and has kept administered ever since. You can't just drill a domestic well and assume you're covered, new wells or points of diversion go through OSE District II in Roswell and get evaluated case by case using hydrology models specific to the Roswell basin. Talk to that office early, before you buy land counting on well water.

Utility disconnection (going without grid power or municipal hookups) doesn't appear to be explicitly barred by any county ordinance I found, but I couldn't confirm it either, so verify directly with Planning & Zoning if that's central to your plan.