## Facts

- Barbara A. Walck owned farmland in Lower Towamensing Township’s R-1 Low Density Residential District, and Edgar F. Lorah, Jr. farmed the land as her tenant.
- The township zoning ordinance permitted “agriculture” in the R-1 district but prohibited “intensive agricultural activities.”
- The ordinance defined “intensive agriculture” to include specialized activities that, due to production intensity or raw-material storage needs, require special controls for operations, storage, processing, and disposal of liquid and solid wastes.
- The Township received multiple complaints that sewage sludge was being stored on the property.
- After inspections in June and July 2005, the zoning officer observed a large sewage-sludge stockpile.
- The zoning officer issued an enforcement notice directing Walck to cease using the property for storing, dumping, and stockpiling solid waste, citing ordinance provisions limiting intensive agriculture and waste-related uses.
- Walck and Lorah asserted the sludge was used in farming and that state law regulating nutrient practices, including the Nutrient Management Act (NMA), displaced local zoning control over the activity.
- The zoning hearing board upheld the enforcement notice, and the court of common pleas affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether the Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Act and its regulations preempt a township’s zoning enforcement against long-term farm stockpiling of sewage sludge.
2. Whether long-term stockpiling of large quantities of sewage sludge is a permitted “agricultural” use or an impermissible intensive-agriculture/solid-waste use under the township ordinance.

## Decision

- The Commonwealth Court affirmed the order upholding the enforcement notice.
- The NMA did not preempt the Township’s zoning enforcement regarding long-term sewage-sludge stockpiling.
- Substantial evidence supported the zoning hearing board’s finding that the size and duration of the stockpile exceeded ordinary agriculture and fell within the ordinance’s prohibited uses.

## Legal Principles

- State statutory preemption of municipal zoning is not inferred absent a clear legislative intent to displace local land-use control.
- The NMA’s regulation of nutrient practices does not, by itself, bar municipalities from applying zoning restrictions to the land-use aspects of storage and handling of nutrient-related materials.
- A zoning hearing board’s fact findings and credibility determinations in a land-use appeal are upheld absent legal error or an abuse of discretion, and a reasonable interpretation of the municipality’s own ordinance receives deference.
- Where an ordinance permits agriculture but prohibits intensive agriculture and waste-storage uses, long-term stockpiling of sewage sludge may be treated as a prohibited use when the record shows extended storage and waste-control concerns rather than short-term field application as fertilizer.

## Conclusion

The court held that the Nutrient Management Act did not displace municipal zoning authority over land-use regulation of farm-related sludge storage and affirmed enforcement against a long-term, large sewage-sludge stockpile as an impermissible use under the township’s ordinance.


Walck v. Lower Towamensing Twp. Zoning Hearing Bd., 942 A.2d 200 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2008)