Buying Land in Clinton County, Indiana

Zoning: a joint Area Plan Commission covering four towns and the county

Clinton County has adopted county-wide zoning, administered through an Area Plan Commission that provides zoning, subdivision review, and permitting services jointly for Mulberry, Rossville, Kirklin, and Colfax, in addition to unincorporated Clinton County -- a real example of the multi-jurisdiction "area plan commission" arrangement Indiana's advisory planning law (IC 36-7-4) specifically allows, combining several small towns and the county under one plan commission and one zoning ordinance rather than each maintaining a separate one. Frankfort, the county seat and Clinton County's largest city, appears to retain its own separate zoning authority rather than falling under that joint APC -- confirm directly which body governs a specific parcel depending on whether it sits inside Frankfort, inside one of the four APC-member towns, or in unincorporated county land.

Wind: a $250 million proposal, and a moratorium that has outlasted it

Clinton County's clearest land-use story is its wind-energy standoff. E.ON, a Chicago-based renewable energy developer, proposed a roughly $250 million wind project for the county -- somewhere between 35 and 52 turbines, enough generating capacity to power an estimated 50,000 Indiana homes, with a stated $30 million benefit to the county and $25 million to participating landowners spread over 30 years. Rather than approving it, Clinton County commissioners imposed a moratorium on wind farm applications starting in February 2017. That moratorium proved durable: at a September 2019 hearing at the Frankfort public library that drew a crowd largely dressed in red to signal opposition, commissioners voted to keep the moratorium in place rather than let the project, or any other wind application, move forward.

See our dedicated wind and solar leasing page for Clinton County for how this moratorium has held up since, and what it means in practice for a landowner who has been approached about a wind lease or a buyer evaluating land inside the originally proposed project footprint.

Solar: further along than wind, but not identical treatment

Clinton County's Area Plan Commission has taken a notably different path on solar than on wind, having adopted a solar ordinance and separately discussed a possible solar farm overlay district. That doesn't mean solar development here is unconstrained -- any specific solar proposal still has to clear the APC's own standards -- but it does mean a buyer evaluating a solar lease inquiry in Clinton County is dealing with a meaningfully different regulatory posture than a wind lease inquiry in the same county, and shouldn't assume the wind moratorium tells you anything about how a solar application would be treated.

Septic, GIS, and other departments to know

The Clinton County Health Department (1234 Rossville Ave., Suite B, Frankfort; (765) 659-6385) issues septic permits under the statewide ISDH 410 IAC 6-8.3 framework. The Clinton County Assessor's office handles property valuation and parcel/GIS questions, and the County Recorder holds deeds, easements, and plats -- including where any future wind or solar lease affecting a specific parcel would be recorded if the county's posture on either technology shifts.