RV Parks & Campgrounds in Greene County, TN: 2025 Rules

After rejecting a broader proposal in March 2025 and running a roughly nine-month moratorium on new development, the Greene County Commission approved a detailed RV park and campground ordinance 16-4 on August 18, 2025. If you're buying land to operate a campground, park a camper long-term, or live near one, here's what actually changed.

This page covers what's specific to Greene County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

How Greene County got here: a moratorium, then a rejected proposal, then a vote

Greene County's current RV park and campground ordinance is the end point of a genuinely multi-year local process, not a rule that appeared out of nowhere. Like much of East Tennessee, the county saw a real boom in RV park and campground development starting around 2020, and by 2024 that growth had generated enough concern about road capacity, utility strain, and campgrounds appearing in or near residential areas that the County Commission adopted a roughly six-month moratorium on new RV parks and campgrounds in June 2024, later extended about three months while officials worked on a permanent regulatory framework.

A first, more sweeping version of new regulations was brought to the Commission and narrowly rejected in March 2025 -- commissioners who voted against it described the document as too far-reaching and overly complex. County officials then worked toward a pared-down version, which the Commission approved by a 16-4 vote on August 18, 2025. That vote count is worth noting on its own: this was not a unanimous, uncontroversial rule, and it's reasonable to expect continued local debate and possible future amendment, so treat the August 2025 ordinance as the current rule to verify directly rather than as a permanently settled matter.

What the adopted ordinance actually requires

The ordinance approved in August 2025 takes a notably detailed approach compared with a simple park-or-no-park rule. RV campers are explicitly allowed to serve as permanent residences, but only if connected to an approved septic system and secured to meet standards equivalent to mobile-home installation requirements -- meaning a permanently sited camper is treated, functionally, much like a manufactured home rather than a temporary vacation unit. Units used this way are subject to inspection and regulation similar to mobile homes, with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation given a role in that oversight. Campers can be placed on either private property or within a campground, and the county's reporting on the ordinance describes a placement as "permanent" once it exceeds 90 days -- a threshold worth confirming precisely against the ordinance text if your plan sits close to that line.

For campground operators specifically, the ordinance adds real operational obligations beyond a simple permit fee: a log of all occupants, both short-term campers and permanent residents, must be kept; a designated check-in area is required to keep arriving traffic from backing up onto county roads; on-site staff presence is required during daytime hours; and operators must provide a 24/7 emergency contact number for both campers and nearby residents to reach. Once a camper is used as a permanent dwelling, it becomes subject to property tax assessment the same as any other residential structure -- a cost that's easy to overlook when comparing a camper's purchase price to a stick-built home's, but one the county will now apply directly.

Penalties, and what to verify before you buy or build

Enforcement under the new ordinance is structured with escalating daily fines: minor violations carry a $100-per-day penalty, and major violations carry $250 per day, with repeat violations able to result in outright permit revocation. That's a meaningfully stiffer enforcement structure than a one-time fine, and it means an operator who falls out of compliance -- on inspections, occupant logging, or the septic/mobile-home-standard requirement for permanent units -- faces a compounding cost the longer the issue goes unresolved.

Before buying land in Greene County with an RV park, campground, or long-term-camper plan in mind, get the full current ordinance text directly from the Greene County Clerk's office or County Commission, confirm whether your specific parcel needs a new business license or permit application under the 2025 rules, and separately confirm septic approval and TDEC's current inspection process for any unit you intend to place permanently -- since Greene County's own Department of Environmental Health no longer processes septic applications directly and instead routes them through TDEC's online system or its Johnson City-based regional field office (see the Greene County hub page for that detail). If you're buying near an existing campground rather than operating one, the same ordinance's occupant-log and emergency-contact requirements are worth knowing as a baseline for what oversight is now supposed to exist next door.

A live test case: the Presidential View RV Ranch lawsuit

The new ordinance and Greene County's underlying A-1 zoning are already being tested in court, not just on paper. A Greene County resident, Stephanie Hopson, filed suit against Greene County and the Greene County Regional Planning Commission in Greene County Chancery Court, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to stop construction of a specific project -- the Presidential View RV Ranch, planned along Woolsey College Road. Neighbors opposing the project, including resident Brian Bradley, have pointed to the road's narrow width (reported at roughly 16 feet) as inadequate for the additional RV and vehicle traffic the development would bring, alongside concerns about increased campfire smoke affecting nearby homes.

For a buyer, this is genuinely useful, current context rather than a side story: it shows the new ordinance and the county's A-1 zoning don't resolve every siting dispute on their own, and that a road-access or neighbor-impact objection can still reach the Chancery Court even after a project clears the county's own permit and zoning review. If you're evaluating land near a planned or proposed RV park -- on Woolsey College Road or elsewhere in the county -- ask directly whether a similar road-capacity or neighbor dispute exists for that specific site, and if you're the one planning to build a park, budget for the possibility of a legal challenge even after local approval, particularly on a narrow rural road.

RV Parks & Campgrounds in Greene County, Tennessee

How Greene County got here: a moratorium, then a rejected proposal, then a vote

What the adopted ordinance actually requires

Penalties, and what to verify before you buy or build

A live test case: the Presidential View RV Ranch lawsuit

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