Washington County, AR Right to Farm: Agricultural Zoning Protection (2026)

05(1)(a), the County Judge must file a recorded notice in the real estate records of the Circuit Clerk's office stating that anyone buying unincorporated Washington County property is on notice that farming, livestock or timber operations may already exist, or may later locate, nearby. 05(1)(b) lets the County Judge publicize this notice by any method he considers useful. 07 backs the notice with a real zoning act: subsection 1 declares all unincorporated portions of the county zoned per the official map kept with the County Clerk and Planning Director, and subsection 3 designates those zones as agricultural and single-family residential, with single-family lots required to run at least one acre unless a city's own subdivision regulations demand a bigger lot, in which case the larger size controls.

Subsection 4 defines "agricultural" broadly to cover livestock, poultry, apiary products, greenhouses, kennels, crop and timber production, and controlled aquaculture and silviculture operations. Any use outside those two categories is a conditional use under subsection 5, reviewed by the Zoning Board of Adjustment (which sits as the Planning Board) and ratified by the Quorum Court by ordinance. 05 was adopted by Ord. 2006-013, passed May 13, 2006, and amended by Ord. 07 was adopted by Ord. 2006-066, passed November 13, 2006, and last amended by Ord. 2015-090, passed November 23, 2015.