Off-Grid Living in Chenango County, New York

If you're eyeing raw land in Chenango County, New York for an off-grid setup, here's what my research turned up, and where the gaps are.

First, the big structural point: Chenango County has no countywide zoning ordinance. That's normal for upstate New York. Zoning power sits with each town and village individually. The county Planning & Development office plays a coordinating role, mainly through General Municipal Law §239 referral reviews when a project sits near a municipal boundary, but it doesn't set or enforce zoning districts itself. So whether raw land can be occupied, what dwelling types are allowed, and how RVs or tiny homes get treated, all of that depends on which town or village your parcel is in. You need to call that specific town hall.

Building and fire code enforcement, by contrast, IS centralized. The Chenango County Fire and Building Code Enforcement Department enforces the NYS Uniform Fire Prevention and Building Code for every municipality in the county except the Town and Village of Greene, the Village of Earlville, and the City of Norwich, which run their own code offices. A building permit is generally required for work covered by the state code, with narrow exceptions for repairs that don't touch structural elements.

Septic and wastewater fall to the county's Public Health Department, Environmental Division, which handles plan review, permitting, and inspection of on-site wastewater systems, plus well-water quality concerns. Composting toilets aren't separately addressed at the county level as far as I found, they'd fall back on New York State Department of Health rules. Well drilling itself requires a DEC-registered driller under state rules; I found no extra county permit layer on top of that.

Greywater reuse and rainwater harvesting don't have any Chenango County or town-specific rules I could locate. That means you're working from the state baseline: New York's Appendix 75-A framework for greywater (fairly restrictive, with disinfection required for indoor reuse) and generally permitted rainwater catchment for non-potable use. Confirm nothing local has been layered on top.

Living off-grid utility-wise (no grid power, no municipal water/sewer) isn't banned countywide as far as I can tell, but whether a structure can pass habitability review without those connections comes down to how the town's zoning code and the Uniform Code get applied during permitting. Some towns are much more flexible than others.

Bottom line: the county sets your building-code and septic/well baseline, but zoning, and therefore whether you can actually live the way you want on a given parcel, is a town-by-town question. Don't skip that call.