St. Joseph County: no page here yet
We have written county pages for the 30 most populous Michigan counties. The county that covers Sturgis is not one of them, so this page points to the region and the state overview instead.
West Michigan
In West Michigan, Ottawa County is the one county we confirmed requires an evaluation at sale, with fees effective Oct 1, 2026. Kent, Kalamazoo, Berrien and Allegan counties publish regulations, a code or an ordinance whose text names no sale rule, though each health department evaluates systems on request, and the pages we have for Muskegon, Van Buren, Ionia and Montcalm show no sale rule either. Muskegon's $175 permit includes the site evaluation, Van Buren/Cass requires connection to an available sewer within 18 months of written notice, and Montcalm is served by the Mid-Michigan District Health Department, which asks for a pump card before it releases a mortgage evaluation. A county in this region without a page of its own still has a health department, a sanitary code and a permit file. Call it before you list a house or book work, and ask for the code, the fee schedule and the record of your system.