Off-Grid Living in Millard County, Utah

I've been digging into Millard County, Utah for anyone thinking about going off-grid out here, and the short version is: this is not a "no zoning, do what you want" county. Unlike some rural Utah counties, Millard County has an adopted, countywide Zoning Ordinance (Title 10 of the county code, hosted on American Legal Publishing) that applies to all unincorporated land, administered by the Planning & Zoning Department. If you're inside an incorporated town like Delta, Fillmore, or Kanosh, that town runs its own separate building and zoning enforcement, so this brief is strictly about unincorporated county land.

Zoning here divides the county into districts with their own use tables, and whether a tent, yurt, or RV could count as a permanent dwelling really depends on which district your parcel sits in. I couldn't confirm a blanket answer on that from official sources, so call Planning & Zoning before you assume anything.

On dwellings, the county's own building department documentation is clear that any residential dwelling in unincorporated Millard County needs a Conditional Use Permit recorded with the deed, explicitly framed as protection for the county's agriculture industry. Building permits themselves flow from the state-adopted construction code (Utah Code 17-27a-802 requires a permit before you build, alter, or change occupancy of a structure), enforced locally by the county Building Inspection Department.

Here's the part that surprised me: Millard County has a real teeth requirement baked into the building permit process. Every habitable structure needs a certified water source delivering a minimum of 40 psi at one acre-foot per year, confirmed before a permit is issued. And you can't even get that building permit until you've secured a wastewater permit from the Central Utah Public Health Department (CUHD), which administers septic under the statewide R317-4 rule. No county-specific composting toilet carve-out turned up in my research, so that path likely still needs CUHD sign-off.

Greywater and rainwater look like they simply follow state rules here. I found no Millard-specific ordinance on either, so greywater presumably still runs through CUHD's R317-401 permit system, and rainwater collection follows the statewide Utah Code 73-3-1.5 framework via the Division of Water Rights, with no county add-on that I could confirm.

Wells are entirely a state matter, run by the Division of Water Rights, not the county, though Millard County's Recorder's office simply points residents there. You need a valid water right before drilling, and a licensed well driller or shallow well constructor for that work.

Bottom line on "just living disconnected": the county's building permit process, chained to CUHD's wastewater approval and that 40 psi water requirement, closes off a lot of off-grid ambiguity for anyone actually pulling permits. Whether an unpermitted small dwelling can just quietly exist long-term without any of this isn't addressed anywhere I found, officially it's unclear, so treat that as a real legal risk, not a loophole.