Oddly, I read about this lawsuit in the Evansville Courier Press even though it’s in my neck of the woods. (In fact, I had a hearing with the Defendant’s attorney earlier today in an unrelated case.)
The town of Kentland and 13 individuals are going to court to fight a 4,200-head mega-dairy that has received approval from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and from local planners.
Gerrit Dekker of Oxford is planning the dairy for land near Kentland, about 100 miles northwest of Indianapolis along the Illinois border. Kentland and the 13 individuals sued the Benton County Board of Zoning Appeals, claiming it violated Indiana’s Open Door Law when it held an unadvertised executive session during a meeting in 2004. The closed-door session occurred during the board’s regular meeting just before it voted to approve an exemption allowing the dairy farm.
The main concern of the Plaintiffs, obviously, is not with a technical violation of the Open Door law but rather with the effects of having that kind of operation in your back yard. One resident expressed reservations about having a 50 million gallon manure lagoon 1.6 miles away from his front door. Odors, strain on water pressure, and adverse effects on property values are a primary concern.
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