Buying Land in Midland County, Michigan

Midland's defining fact: an active river-floodplain Superfund cleanup

Dow Chemical's global headquarters and original manufacturing plant sit on roughly 1,900 acres along the Tittabawassee River in the city of Midland, and decades of historical dioxin discharge into the river left contamination extending more than 50 miles downstream through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers into Saginaw Bay. The Tittabawassee River, Saginaw River & Bay is a federal Superfund site on the National Priorities List, with an active, still-ongoing EPA- and Michigan EGLE-overseen cleanup that Dow itself is funding and carrying out. For a land buyer, the part of this that matters most sits close to home: a documented Tittabawassee River Floodplain cleanup area of roughly 4,500 acres extending about 21 miles below Dow's plant, where hundreds of individual properties have been or are being evaluated and, in some cases, remediated.

This is a genuinely distinctive, well-documented situation -- not background color -- and it deserves its own page rather than a passing mention. See our dedicated flood-zones page for Midland County for the specific cleanup criteria, geographic extent, and what to check before buying land anywhere near the Tittabawassee River in the county.

Zoning: the city and townships administer their own rules

Midland County's government is led by a Board of Commissioners, but consistent with Michigan's township-primary zoning system statewide, the City of Midland and the county's townships administer their own separate zoning ordinances rather than operating under a single county-wide code. Midland Charter Township is one directly confirmed example, with its own zoning ordinance adopted by the Township Board in 2007. This page did not confirm a complete, current list of every one of Midland County's roughly 16 townships' zoning status -- before treating a specific parcel as subject to a particular set of rules, confirm directly whether it sits in the city, a self-zoned charter or general-law township, or an area where county zoning might apply as a gap-filler.

Septic and wells: the Midland County Health Department

Septic systems and wells in Midland County are permitted by the Midland County Health Department's Environmental Health Services, 220 W Ellsworth St, Midland, MI 48640, (989) 832-6380. Sanitarians there conduct soil evaluations (perc tests), inspections, and permitting for both new and existing systems, and applications currently must be printed and submitted in person or by mail rather than online. Given the floodplain situation described above, a parcel's soil and site evaluation near the Tittabawassee River may also intersect with the separate EPA/EGLE cleanup process -- worth asking the health department directly whether a specific riverside parcel has been part of that program.