Beallsville

Monroe County is a small (population approximately 13,300), heavily rural county in southeastern Ohio fronting the Ohio River across from Marshall and Wetzel counties, West Virginia. The county seat is the Village of Woodsfield. Ohio operates under a strong home-rule constitutional framework (Ohio Const. Art. XVIII, Sec. 3), and Ohio has not enacted any statewide ADU preemption or by-right ADU statute. ADU regulatory authority in Monroe County is distributed: (a) the county itself may adopt countywide rural zoning under O.R.C. Chapter 303 but has not done so — Monroe County has no countywide zoning resolution; (b) the county's 14 townships may individually adopt township zoning under O.R.C. Chapter 519, but the overwhelming majority of Monroe County's townships are unzoned; (c) the incorporated villages (Woodsfield, Beallsville, Clarington, Lewisville, New Matamoras, and historically Antioch and Graysville) regulate land use under their own home-rule zoning where any has been adopted. In practice, ADU rules in unincorporated Monroe County are governed by the host township's resolution (if any) plus state building code applicability and state-administered overlays, not by a county ordinance.

• Ohio Const. Art. XVIII, Sec. 3 (Home Rule)
• O.R.C. Chapter 303 — County Rural Zoning
• O.R.C. Chapter 519 — Township Zoning

State-floor overlay: No statewide Ohio ADU preemption exists as of 2026-05-20. The Residential Code of Ohio (adopted by the Ohio Board of Building Standards from the IRC, with Ohio amendments) sets the construction-code floor for one- and two-family dwellings statewide, but use, density, setbacks, parking, and owner-occupancy are local. Because Monroe County has not adopted Chapter 303 zoning and has no certified residential building department, the practical floor for an ADU on most unincorporated Monroe parcels is: state health-department on-site sewage rules, FEMA NFIP floodplain rules (administered locally), Ohio EPA private-water rules, and Ohio Department of Transportation / county-engineer right-of-way rules.

Monroe County's principal county-administered overlay affecting ADU feasibility is its NFIP-participating floodplain ordinance, which covers FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas along the Ohio River corridor (the entire eastern edge of the county) and along the lower reaches of the major tributary streams (Sunfish Creek, Captina Creek, Clear Fork, Little Muskingum River). Beyond floodplain, the most consequential parcel-level factors in Monroe County are not zoning overlays in the regulatory sense but constructability and title issues: (a) the county is one of the most active Utica/Marcellus shale production counties in Ohio, with widespread oil-and-gas leasing, unitization, pipelines, well pads, and compressor stations that constrain ADU siting on the parcel; and (b) parts of the county sit above legacy underground coal workings (Pittsburgh No. 8 seam, plus older Meigs Creek workings), which raises subsidence-engineering and insurance considerations. The county does not maintain a historic-district overlay, a wildland-urban-interface fire overlay, or any coastal-management overlay (the Ohio River is regulated through floodplain rather than coastal-management rules).

• Monroe County Floodplain Management (FEMA NFIP participation) — A new ADU on an Ohio River SFHA parcel must be elevated to or above the Base Flood Elevation per the local floodplain ordinance and 44 CFR 60.3. Substantial-improvement triggers apply when an ADU project's cost exceeds 50 percent of the host structure's pre-improvement market value — a common ADU planning trap on older river-bottom homes whose pre-improvement market value is low.
• Utica / Marcellus shale unitization and surface-use easements — This is a parcel-level title and surface-easement issue rather than a zoning overlay; the county itself does not administer oil-and-gas operations (ODNR has sole-and-exclusive jurisdiction under O.R.C. Sec. 1509.02). It is included here because in Monroe County it is one of the most common factors that derails an otherwise-allowed ADU.
• Coal-mine subsidence risk (legacy underground workings) — Not a regulatory zoning overlay — the county does not block construction over undermined ground — but a material constructability and insurance consideration for any ADU foundation on a parcel above legacy workings.

Monroe County is not a State of Ohio Board of Building Standards (BBS) certified residential building department. Under Ohio's opt-in residential-enforcement framework, this means residential plan review and inspection for Residential Code of Ohio (RCO) compliance for one- and two-family dwellings is not actively administered at the county level. A new ADU on an unincorporated Monroe County parcel does not get a county building permit because no county building permit exists for residential work. The functional permit stack consists of: Monroe County Health Department on-site sewage (Household Sewage Treatment System) and private-water permits, FEMA NFIP floodplain development permits where the parcel lies in a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area (the county is an NFIP participant for the unincorporated areas), Monroe County Engineer driveway / right-of-way permits for new access to a county road, 911 address assignment, and township zoning compliance only where the parcel's township has actually adopted zoning under O.R.C. Chapter 519. Inside the villages, the village (typically through a part-time clerk-of-council or building official) administers any local building, zoning, and floodplain permits.