Buying Land in Monroe County, Illinois

Government and zoning: one of 17 counties with no townships

Monroe County is one of only 17 Illinois counties -- alongside Alexander, Calhoun, Edwards, Hardin, Johnson, Massac, Menard, Morgan, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, Scott, Union, Wabash, and Williamson -- that never adopted township government. A three-member Board of Commissioners serves as the county's legislative and executive body, with no township layer beneath it and no township-level zoning objection process to navigate under 55 ILCS 5/5-12007.

Monroe County's own Zoning Code, administered by the Zoning & Building department at 100 S. Main Street in Waterloo, traces its origin to an ordinance the Board of Commissioners passed effective July 7, 1969 -- one of the longer-standing zoning codes among Illinois's commission-form counties. The office also issues building and electrical permits, handles flood-zoning determinations and zoning appeals, and maintains the county's Comprehensive Land Use Plan for unincorporated territory. Waterloo (the county seat), Columbia, Valmeyer, Hecker, Maeystown, and Fults each apply their own municipal zoning inside their corporate limits -- confirm with both the county and the relevant municipality which ordinance governs a specific parcel near a town boundary.

Valmeyer: a village that moved itself off the floodplain

Monroe County's single most distinctive land-use story is Valmeyer. During the Great Flood of 1993, the Mississippi River spilled over the levee protecting the village, burying nearly all of it under roughly 16 feet of water for months and substantially damaging more than 200 homes. Rather than rebuild on the same ground, Valmeyer's residents decided to move: using FEMA and State of Illinois buyout funds, the village relocated its townsite about two miles east, onto bluff land more than 300 feet above the floodplain.

The relocation bought out roughly 300 homes and 25 businesses on the old floodplain site, funded a new townsite that reportedly cost around $35 million to build, and took about a year and a half before the first residents could move into new homes. Valmeyer's population, which exceeded 900 before the flood, settled at roughly 500-600 after the move. The old townsite in the American Bottom still shows a street grid and a park among the missing buildings; the new Valmeyer sits atop the bluff nearby. FEMA has cited the relocation as a national model for flood-buyout planning. See our dedicated flood-zones page for what this means for evaluating land anywhere in Monroe County's river bottoms today.

The floodplain edge beyond Valmeyer

Valmeyer's story is the most dramatic example, but it isn't the only floodplain land in the county. Fults, Monroe County's smallest incorporated village (28 residents at the 2020 census), sits within the Mississippi River floodplain today, and drainage and levee infrastructure -- including the Fish Lake Drainage and Levee District No. 8 -- protects other low-lying county land along the river. Anyone evaluating a parcel in the western part of the county, particularly in the bottomland between the bluffs and the river, should pull a current FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map for that specific parcel rather than assuming the county's overall commission-government or zoning framework says anything about flood exposure.

Septic, GIS, and other departments to know

The Monroe County Health Department (1315 Jamie Lane, Waterloo; (618) 939-3871 ext. 213) issues well and septic permits, conducts wastewater and septic-system inspections, and administers a local on-site domestic wastewater treatment ordinance that has been in place since 1986, layered on top of the statewide IDPH Title 77 Part 905 framework. Septic systems here go through an initial inspection and permit stage followed by a final evaluation once installation is complete.

Monroe County's Geographic Information Systems office and Supervisor of Assessments (both at 100 S. Main St., Waterloo) handle GIS parcel mapping and property valuation, and the Recorder of Deeds (same building) holds recorded deeds, easements, and plats for a specific parcel. University of Illinois Extension serves Monroe County jointly with Madison and St. Clair Counties, with a Monroe County office in Waterloo.