Cows 2For the past 30 years, Harvest Christian Camp has provided a summer camp for thousands of Christian children on a 36 acre site in Henry County, Indiana, in accordance with its religious beliefs to “help[] children and teens to develop a strong life-long relationship with the Lord [through] praise and worship, Bible classes, devotions and night services to strengthen their spiritual lives [and have] a lot of fun and fellowship.”  The Camp’s facilities include 13 open-air cabins, 106 beds, three classrooms/dorms, a sanctuary, kitchen, and shop.  Each year the Camp hosts about 500 campers between the ages of 4 and 17, who participate in outdoor and educational activities such as archery, swimming, go-carts, giant slip and slide, paintball, music, drama and art classes, and bible study.  The Camp’s sanctuary is used regularly throughout the year for religious services.

Now, the Camp has taken issue with the Rush County Zoning Board of Appeals’ (ZBA) approval of a special exception permit to allow the operation of a dairy farm to be located about a half mile and upwind from the Camp site.  The Camp claims in its complaint that the dairy farm “will include, among other things, a free stall barn to house 1,400 cows along with three earthen, outdoor waste lagoons for the collection of approximately 20 million gallons of feces, urine, silage leachate, contaminated storm water, and process[ed] wastewater.  The collected waste will be emptied from the lagoons and spread on various land parcels in Rush and Henry counties that surround” the Camp site.

The proposed dairy farm is a “Large Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)” as defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (read about it here) and under Indiana law is subject to state regulation as well.  As discussed in the report Environmental Impact of Industrial Farm Animal Production, the potential impacts of a CAFO can be substantial.

The Camp has sued the ZBA in state court “due to the concern that the noxious odors and harmful air emissions caused by the 1,400 dairy cows and millions of gallons of urine and feces so close to its property will destroy the outdoor experiences for children that are central to Harvest Christian Camp’s mission, purpose and exercise of religion.”  The Camp alleges violations of its religious beliefs as protected by the Religious Land Use & Institutionalized Persons Act and the U.S. Constitution, in addition to claims under Indiana law.  The Camp’s complaint is available here.

The Camp’s lawyer stated: “The camp’s very existence is at stake.  Parents of young children are not going to want to send their kids to this camp with that sort of operation so close by.”  Local coverage is available here.

Photo by Rose Craft, some rights reserved.

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Photo of Evan Seeman Evan Seeman

Evan J. Seeman is a lawyer in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford office and focuses his practice on land use, real estate, environmental, and regulatory matters, representing local governments, developers and advocacy groups. He has spoken and written about RLUIPA, and was a lead author of…

Evan J. Seeman is a lawyer in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford office and focuses his practice on land use, real estate, environmental, and regulatory matters, representing local governments, developers and advocacy groups. He has spoken and written about RLUIPA, and was a lead author of an amicus curiae brief at the petition stage before the United States Supreme Court in a RLUIPA case entitled City of San Leandro v. International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

Evan serves as the Secretary/Treasurer of the APA’s Planning & Law Division. He also serves as the Chair of the Planning & Zoning Section of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section, and is the former Co-Chair of its Municipal Law Section. He has been named to the Connecticut Super Lawyers® list as a Rising Star in the area of Land Use Law for 2013 and 2014. He received his B.A. in political science and Russian studies (with honors) from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was selected as the President’s Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature. Evan received his Juris Doctor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he served on the Connecticut Law Review. While in law school, he interned with the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General in the environmental department, and served as a judicial intern for the judges of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court. Following law school, Evan clerked for the Honorable F. Herbert Gruendel of the Connecticut Appellate Court.

Photo of Dwight Merriam Dwight Merriam

Dwight H. Merriam founded Robinson+Cole’s Land Use Group in 1978. He represents land owners, developers, governments and individuals in land use matters, with a focus on defending governments in RLUIPA cases. Dwight is a Fellow and Past President of the American Institute of…

Dwight H. Merriam founded Robinson+Cole’s Land Use Group in 1978. He represents land owners, developers, governments and individuals in land use matters, with a focus on defending governments in RLUIPA cases. Dwight is a Fellow and Past President of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a former Director of the American Planning Association (APA), a former chair of APA’s Planning and Law Division, Immediate Past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of State and Local Government Law, Chair of the Institute of Local Government Studies at the Center for American and International Law, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute National Advisory Board, a Fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, a Counselor of Real Estate, a member of the Anglo-American Real Property Institute, and a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers.

He teaches land use law at the University of Connecticut School of Law and at Vermont Law School and has published over 200 articles and eight books, including Inclusionary Zoning Moves Downtown, The Takings Issue, The Complete Guide to Zoning, and Eminent Domain Use and Abuse: Kelo in Context. He is the senior co-author of the leading casebook on land use law, Planning and Control of Land Development (Eighth Edition). Dwight has written and spoken widely on how to avoid RLUIPA claims and how to successfully defend against them in court. He is currently writing a book on the subject, RLUIPA DEFENSE, for the American Bar Association.

Dwight has been named to the Connecticut Super Lawyers® list in the area of Land Use Law since 2006, is one of the Top 50 Connecticut Super Lawyers in Connecticut, and is one of the Top 100 New England Super Lawyers (Super Lawyers is a registered trademark of Key Professional Media, Inc.). He received his B.A. (cum laude) from the University of Massachusetts, his Masters of Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina, where he was the graduation speaker in 2011, and his J.D. from Yale. He is a featured speaker at many land use seminars, and presents monthly audio land use seminars for the International Municipal Lawyers Association. Dwight has been cited in the national press from The New York Times to People magazine and has appeared on NBC’s The Today Show, MSNBC and public television.

Dwight also had a career in the Navy, serving for three tours in Vietnam aboard ship, then returning to be the Senior Advisor of the Naval ROTC Unit at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he taught Defense Administration and Military Management as an Assistant Professor in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in Defense Administration and Military Management. He left active duty after seven years to attend law school, but continued on for 24 more years as a reserve Surface Warfare Officer with two major commands, including that of the reserve commanding officer of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. He retired as a Captain in 2009 after 31 years of service.