Texas summer camps have closed, scaled back operations due to state’s new regulations

After almost 20 years of bouncing from campground to campground, Orr Family Ministries finally found its home in 2022 on a 12-acre tree-filled campground located on a hill in Colorado County.

Kids played in the swimming pool, worshipped by the fire pit, and watched the sunset over the hill while learning about Bible stories.

They called it Camp Oak Haven, providing refuge for about 100 children from surrounding low-income and rural communities.

But, this summer, Camp Oak Haven won’t be reopening. Orr Family Ministries has sold the land because it could not meet sweeping regulations the state abruptly placed on the camp industry.

“We are sad. It’s terrible. We had church groups coming, and we had to give back deposits, and I don’t know where those kids will go,” said Cynthia Royal, Orr Family Ministries board president. “The dent is in these rural communities where kids or parents don’t have huge incomes to send them to a huge mega camp miles away.”

After the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods that killed 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, Texas lawmakers required youth camps to implement a slew of new safety requirements, including weather warning systems and having fiber optic internet, and pay thousands of dollars more in licensing fees.

While the state has pulled back on the internet requirement for now, the regulations have shaken up the industry, according to multiple camp directors. Previously licensed camps have reduced their hours of operation, so the state no longer has to license them and they can avoid paying higher licensing fees. Urban camps are scaling back activities for children due to burdensome safety plan requirements, and rural camps are closing due to uncertainty.

Families are also impacted. Many of Camp Oak Haven’s are low-income or work and need daytime care and enrichment for their children during the summer months. Some are still scrambling to find other options after camp officials announced the closure at the end of March.

The state does not track the number of camps that have closed since the new requirements went into effect. But compared to the list of active Texas camps in December, 66 camps no longer appear on the most recent roster updated Friday. It’s not clear how many of those closed because of the regulations or if they’ve scaled back operations so the state doesn’t need to license them.

There are currently 316 camps licensed by the state and the state has approved 47 applications to operate this summer, but most of the rest can still open because their licenses haven’t expired yet or their applications are pending.

“We told them this would happen, but they didn’t listen to any of us,” Royal said about camps closing. “Lawmakers threw out a blanket rule for all camps across the entire state without taking realistic things into consideration. How far away from water are you? How urban are you? How rural are you? None of that was considered.”

In April, a group of 19 camps in Texas filed a lawsuit, arguing the requirement to install fiber-optic internet does not make their properties safer, violates the state Constitution and state law regarding property rights, and could prevent them from opening.

Texas Department of State Health Services, the state’s licensing body for camps, announced this month that it reached an agreement with the 19 operators, dropping the fiber-optic internet requirement for now. Any camps that maintain at least two ways of accessing broadband internet service can be licensed this summer, as long as they meet other safety requirements.

The deal came months too late for Camp Oak Haven.

“We are praising God that the state of Texas and different legislators are waking up and realizing maybe we made a mistake and that this was too much of a blanket rule to throw on everybody because not everybody is on the same boat,” Royal said.

Even with the fiber optics settlement, high licensing fees, an inspection backlog, emergency plan rewrites, and requirements that may force structural changes at camps that are in floodplains threaten to close some youth camps, camp directors say.

When lawmakers revisit camp safety standards during next year’s legislative session, camp directors hope lawmakers will truly consider their feedback.

“It would be like them passing aviation laws without pilot input,” said Eddie Walker, the executive director of Mt. Lebanon Camp and Retreat in Cedar Hill. “Riding on the plane doesn’t qualify them to understand the intricacies of what they do, their training, and experience to fly safely.”

Losing a ‘glimpse into heaven’

Chris Stephens, minister at Ave. G Church of Christ in Temple, has been sending his youth groups along with his four daughters to Camp Oak Haven for several summers because, to him, the camp on the hill was a glimpse into heaven.

“My family didn’t take vacations. We went to camp. We viewed it as that important,” he said.

His children won’t be attending camp this summer and it’s likely the 100 or so others that used to attend won’t either because there are few camp offerings in their remote area. The lack of options affect campers from low-income families particularly harder because parents rely on camps so they can go to work.

“I got some letters from camps in Louisiana and Arkansas about summer camps, but we are a small church, and we can’t afford to send our youth that far away,” he said. “We are looking at vacation bible school, but most of them died out after COVID-19, and they only last one day which is no replacement for camps.”

The fiber optics requirement was Camp Oak Haven’s downfall. Camp Oak Haven officials reached out to multiple internet providers, and the answer was always the same: it’s too remote to even be possible to install fiber.

A preliminary study by the Christian Camps and Conference Association found that at least 173 Texas camps lack fiber access.

Even if camps could find some way to install fiber, it would be very expensive. At one extreme, Camp Liberty said in court filings that it received a quote for $1 million in upfront costs plus a $3,500 monthly service fee over five years. Camp Longhorn received a quote of more than $1.2 million.

“We know other camps that were having to spend over $100,000 to get fiber optics to just stay afloat,” Royal said.

Although the current reprieve will allow camps to stay open this summer, there’s no guarantee that the state will drop the requirement next summer — and rural camps will still face the same challenge of finding someone who will install the service and paying for it.

Beyond the fiber optics requirement, the licensing fee increase for camps and burdensome safety requirements, such as creating rooftop exits on cabins not near the water, are straining the finances of these rural, mostly nonprofit organizations.

Royal said they used some of the funds from the sale of Camp Oak Haven to help other camps to cover their licensing fees or fiber-optic requirements for the summer. Others have offered to honor the price Camp Oak Haven used to charge their families to make it easier for any interested families to join.

But, there will never be another Camp Oak Haven, Stephens said.

“Those relationships made at camp won’t be present anymore. I have witnessed friendships, marriages, and people turn to the ministry because of this camp, and it’s now gone,” he said.

Urban challenge

Camps in the state’s metro areas, which serve the majority of Texas children, run during the day time hours and are also subject to the new state rules. Although lawmakers wrote the rules to better regulate overnight camps, particularly those in rural areas, the regulations don’t make sense for urban camps and the state made no exceptions, camp officials say.

Some of the requirements that are less applicable to urban camps include having rooftop access to cabins and flood emergency plans.

“One of the demands is for having exits for cabins, and one of our camps is at a Catholic girls’ school in Houston. We haven’t seen (requirements like this) in our 32 years of operation,” Mike McDonell, president of Kidventure, which operates 31 day camp locations across Houston, Dallas, and Austin. “The problem is that the state attempted to create safety rules for the situation with Camp Mystic but applied them to all camps.”

Camps located in Harris, Travis, Dallas, Bexar, and Tarrant counties make up about a third of the statewide roster and often provide summer activities for many inner-city or low-income youth at discounted rates, so their budgets are small. “For many, our camp is one of the safest places they are at all year — the same thing for our inner-city camps across the state,” said Walker, whose Cedar Hill camp is in Dallas County.

The state has previously charged day camps between $52 and $155, depending on how many campers they have, to renew their licenses annually. The state has now increased the annual renewal fee for a small day youth camp to $750 and can reach $3,500 for those with 5,000 or more campers. This hike falls particularly hard on multi-location operators. Each licensed site has to pay the fee, not just the parent organization.

“It’s a massive tax on great and safe ministries and programs, including urban-based camps,” Walker said.

Because the state has to license certain day camps if they offer activities like archery, riflery and horseback riding, some urban camps are cutting those programs so they no longer have to be licensed by the state and pay the fees, according to camp directors.

“Some camps may have reduced the number of specialized activities they offer so that they do not meet the definition of a youth camp,” said Lara Anton, a spokesperson for DSHS. “If a camp offers only one or no specialized activity, they are not qualified as a youth camp and do not need to be licensed by DSHS.”

The pain of losing one camp is felt by all in the industry, Walker said. Some of the smallest camps at risk of closing serve a particular niche – children with autism, Down syndrome, mobility issues, deaf children, cancer and diabetes.

“In a business world, a law or regulation that drives the small competitors out of business is really helpful to the big corporation,” he said. “The camp realm is different, and we all work closely together because there is no shortage of children, teens, and needs to serve in every part of the state.”

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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.