A Franklin County farmer will appeal a state agency’s rejection of his plan to expand his dairy from 65 cows to nearly 1,500.

“We’re at a point where we can’t afford to go on,” said John Coen, who farms in the northeast part of the county, “and we can’t afford to stop.”

Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Clyde Graeber rejected Coen’s application Jan. 23, citing concerns about the amount of animal waste and its effects on groundwater.

Coen, who already is appealing a March 2001 KDHE rejection of a similar application, said he might combine the appeals.

In a letter to Graeber, Coen said he would “follow all legal means at my disposal to correct this travesty of errors.”

But Coen’s neighbors rejoiced at the KDHE decision.

“We have said from the beginning … this is not the proper place for a dairy,” said retired dairy farmer Mattie Perry, Coen’s closest neighbor and president of Farmers and Landowners for Responsible Agricultural Land Use, a group of more than 40 residents opposed to the expansion. “It’s a residential area  there are 16 houses, a church and a township hall within a mile of the proposed facility.”

Bruce Plenk, an environmental attorney who represented the group, agreed.

“There are plenty of places in the county where it would be appropriate, but this is not it,” he said.

Coen, who said he had spent $90,000 on the application process, said he was frustrated with his neighbors.

“I think to a certain extent they’ve been a little unfair,” he said. “They haven’t allowed me to prove to them or show them what I’m trying to do.”

There are dairy farms that operate successfully in more residential areas, Coen said. And as northeast Kansas and the rest of the country continue to urbanize, he said, residents must learn to live near agriculture or go hungry.

It’s too hard for small farms to stay in business, he said.

“It’s fine when the price is way up, but when it’s way down, it’s hard to produce a cash flow that makes me competitive,” Coen said. “To remain a viable force in agriculture, we have to get bigger.”