Barrow County, GA Building Setbacks & Zoning: Lot Coverage Limits (2026)

Barrow County's Unified Development Code sets its only percentage-based lot-coverage ceiling inside the small water supply watersheds established under section 89-996: Cedar Creek, Laurel Lane Reservoir, Fort Yargo Lake, Barber's Creek and Bear Creek, each mapped as a watershed protection area feeding a public water source with less than 100 square miles of drainage. Section 89-999(a) limits impervious surface, defined to include every public and private structure, utility and facility, to 25 percent of the entire watershed protection area on the property. There is no path to exceed that ceiling by right: a landowner proposing more than 25 percent impervious surface must obtain special-use approval directly from the board of commissioners under the Development Code's procedures and permits article.

The same division layers on stream corridor setbacks and buffers that reduce the developable area further. Inside the water quality critical area of a small watershed, no impervious surface may be built within 150 feet of a perennial stream bank, dropping to a 100-foot setback in the limited development area; a 100-foot undisturbed vegetative buffer applies in the critical area and 50 feet elsewhere. New hazardous waste facilities and unlined sanitary landfills are barred outright in these watersheds under section 89-999(d).

Outside the five named small watersheds and the three large watersheds along the Apalachee, Middle Oconee and Mulberry Rivers, Table 4.1 of Article IV governs lot dimensions with minimum lot sizes, setbacks and building heights by zoning district, but sets no general maximum lot-coverage percentage; the guest-house standard in section 89-220 refers to the lot coverage maximums applicable to the zone without printing a table, so 25 percent inside the watersheds is the code's only stated numeric coverage limit.