Off-Grid Living in Scituate, Rhode Island

I've been digging through Scituate, Rhode Island's zoning code and the state rules that back it up, and here's the honest picture for anyone hoping to live off-grid here.

First, the big-picture fact: Scituate is a zoned town. It operates under its own Chapter 75 Zoning Ordinance, adopted by the Town Council back in 1994 under state enabling law (R.I.G.L. § 45-24-27 et seq.), so nothing here is "unregulated" land. The town has several districts, RR (Rural Residential), RS (Single-Family Residential), business, manufacturing, and a Watershed district, plus village overlay zones in Hope and North Scituate. If you're eyeing land for a homestead-style setup, the RR-120 zone is the most promising because it calls for large lot minimums, but you'd want to pull the actual dimensional and use tables from the town or ecode360 before assuming anything is allowed by right. Notably, the Zoning Board of Review can require larger lots or fewer units in areas without public water or sewer, which is directly relevant to off-grid living.

On dwellings, tiny homes, and RVs as permanent residences, I could not find a specific Scituate provision addressing this. The ordinance defines "dwelling unit" in a conventional way (a portion of a structure for one family's living, cooking, sleeping), which doesn't leave obvious room for RV or tiny-home living, but there's no explicit ban I found either. Treat this as unclear and confirm directly with the town.

Building permits follow the Rhode Island State Building Code, enforced locally by Scituate's Building Official. Permits are required for anything beyond "ordinary repairs" (roofing and siding don't count as ordinary repairs, for example), and applications now run through the state's permits.ri.gov portal.

Septic is governed at the state level by RIDEM's OWTS (onsite wastewater treatment system) rules, and the town's zoning ordinance leans on these same DEM standards for water supply and sewage on multifamily lots. I found no town-specific allowance for composting toilets, so assume conventional or DEM-approved alternative systems are the expectation.

Greywater reuse isn't addressed locally that I could find, so it falls back to state DEM rules, which are restrictive about storing or reusing untreated greywater. Rainwater harvesting, by contrast, doesn't appear restricted by the town or state, so this looks fine.

Private wells fall under state Department of Health rules, and the town's zoning references adequate water supply on-lot for certain development, but I didn't find a distinct town well ordinance.

Living fully disconnected from utilities doesn't have an explicit town green light. The floodplain provisions just point back to the State Building Code. Given the lack of any found exception, I'd treat unconnected permanent dwellings as restricted until you get a direct answer from the town.

Bottom line: Scituate isn't hostile to rural living, but it's a genuinely zoned town layered with state building and DEM requirements, and several off-grid specifics simply aren't spelled out in what I could find, so a call to the Building, Zoning & Planning office is worth it before you buy land or move a structure onto it.