Water isn't only a Western problem. Here's why some Hoosiers are worried about runnin

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Water isn't only a Western problem. Here's why some Hoosiers are worried about running out

Burney Scoles woke up one morning last year, turned on a bathroom faucet and got air instead of water.

The same thing happened at several other homes with wells in his neighborhood outside Noblesville. The reason soon became apparent.

Citizens Energy Group had installed a new pumping station tapping into the same aquifer as their wells. Some neighbors were able to get water by lowering their well pumps, but Scoles and others were without water for days and had to pay thousands of dollars for new wells.

The situation is representative of a much larger problem. When it comes to pulling water from underground sources in Indiana, it’s essentially a free-for-all — and the user with the biggest pump typically wins.

Burney Scoles holds a glass of tap water now that his well water has been restored in the Mill Run Creek neighborhood outside Noblesville on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2023, in Indiana. Scoles well ran dry last summer after Citizens Energy Group installed a water pumping station in an aquifer beneath a nearby property.
For years, studies have revealed the need for a statewide plan to manage water resources, warning that water supply in certain areas ― particularly Central Indiana, where population and economic growth is most concentrated ― may not be able to support the projected expansion.

Indiana, however, has no comprehensive plan or policy.


In that void, fractured oversight falls to a dizzying list of a dozen state and federal agencies. The lack of an overarching plan gives utilities, businesses and even regular citizens a virtual carte-blanche to withdraw, move and use water whenever and wherever they want.

The issue became a flash point early this year after Lafayette officials and residents learned of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation’s plans to pump tens of millions of gallons a day from the nearby Wabash River aquifer and pipe it nearly 40 miles to the LEAP district in Lebanon. The water is critical to plans officials say will attract billions of dollars of investment and new jobs in high-tech, advanced manufacturing at the site.

Construction is under way at the new LEAP Innovation and Research District on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2023, at the intersection of Witt Rd. and Lower Simmons Rd. in Lebanon Ind.
But controversy around the project has continued to boil through the present, and the concerns around the pipeline and water management linger.

"We as a state are very lax when it comes to protecting and managing our water," said Keith Cherkauer, a Purdue professor and the director of the Indiana Water Resource Research Center. "We have the water, but if we don’t manage it well, then we won’t. We will do more damage."

LEAP pipeline plan draws controversy

Tensions are running stronger than ever in the Lafayette area, where residents are finding themselves on the defensive to protect a resource they’ve seldom had to think about.

The IEDC and its contracted engineering firm, Intera, have been saying all along that there’s no need to panic. Maps dating back to the 1980s have shown that the Wabash river area is an abundant source of water, and Intera is in the thick of conducting detailed water studies that they say should prove their hypothesis.

Back in May, based on that historic data, the agency signed a $10 million contract to design the pipeline — before the study was complete.


Preliminary review:LEAP pipeline won't impact state's water supply or residential wells

Last month, the IEDC released its preliminary findings. Those results show two wells near the site could sustainably pump 30 million gallons a day and be replenished by the Wabash River and have minimal impact on nearby homeowners. More detailed results are expected to come later this year.

Despite these findings, the IEDC faced a church sanctuary filled with hundreds of skeptical residents last week. Some compared the controversy to a David-and-Goliath showdown — a giant agency flexing its fiscal muscle to do what it wishes while residents have few oversight rules to stop it.

Monday night in West Lafayette, city councilors approved a resolution opposing the pipeline idea, accusing the IEDC of making the plan “without ensuring there were sufficient water resources” to support the LEAP district.

Construction is under way at the new LEAP Innovation and Research District on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2023, at the intersection of Witt Rd. and Lower Simmons Rd. in Lebanon Ind.
Water researchers and advocates are equally concerned that this attitude of making decisions without a robust understanding of the state’s water resources sets a harmful precedent and creates a false sense of security. Maintaining the status quo without comprehensive management, water advocates say, could place Indiana in peril if the nation's growing water crisis reaches the Crossroads of America.

But IEDC’s Kurt Fullbeck, vice president of development strategies, views this Wabash study — the first-of-its-kind for the region — as part of that long-term planning and acknowledges that that broader discussion needs to happen.

It’s not just about learning what the aquifer can do for the LEAP district, he said, but for Central Indiana’s future water needs as a whole.

“This is one component in an overall discussion about how we manage the water resources in Indiana long term,” Fullbeck said. “This is an important conversation that needs to occur.”

A decade of calls

Indiana has been the land of plenty when it comes to water. The state's water-intensive economic engines, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, depend on access and have driven much of the conversation and decisions around the resource.

Discussions about the need for a water plan aren’t new or exclusive to environmental advocates. Even many business leaders, along with state and local Republican elected officials, have called for a comprehensive water plan with a clear delineation of authority.

Other midwestern states such as Ohio and Michigan have recognized the importance of water planning and implemented their own management policies or programs.

But in Indiana, multiple agencies ― including the Department of Natural Resources, Department of Environmental Management, the Utility Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Geological Survey and universities ― all collect data or manage programs related to some aspect of water, whether it's monitoring water quality or permitting water infrastructure.

This study for the LEAP project is the first of its kind in the Lafayette region.

This picture shows a test well used for the aquifer testing as part of the Lebanon LEAP project, to help determine if there is enough water to support the development. Two such test wells pumped for 3 days each while monitoring wells recorded water level changes.
In 2011, then-Gov. Mitch Daniels asked those agencies to see if they could consolidate their water programs and develop a central "Indiana Office of Water." But that effort failed, according to a study from the Indiana Finance Authority, because "the group was unable to overcome the individual participant’s sense of ownership for their agency missions."

The Indiana Chamber, in a 2014 study, called for a state entity to take the reins on water management.

"Collectively, the state relies on these agencies to manage a resource, but without coordination or focus," the Chamber study revealed. "Sadly, when everyone is responsible, no one is responsible."

Indiana lawmakers also have called repeatedly for studies. A 2018 Water Infrastructure Task Force, which focused on water quality, recommended legislators extend the task force to address quantity and the need for a state-wide plan. That hasn't happened.

Water quality:New report finds Indiana has the most dirty waterways in U.S. The cause may surprise you.

Instead, the state has placed a much larger focus on water quality. In 2019, lawmakers created a water infrastructure assistance fund, which provides grants and loans to local entities working on drinking, waste or stormwater projects. The state has put $20 million a year into that fund, though a recent task force found the state's needs in these areas to top $15 billion.

Absent a comprehensive plan, utilities like Citizens have largely taken up water-quantity planning, projecting future demand within their own systems to make sure it can be met. However, an Indiana Finance Authority study in 2015 found those utilities largely don't know the status of aquifers and wells outside their own systems.


"To some degree that means that local water management has never worked and never will work," said Cherkauer of the Indiana Water Resource Research Center.

The most recent round of studies came from the IFA, which is the state's bond issuer but not a state agency itself, in just the last five years. The Central Indiana Water Study, released in 2021, projected a potential shortage in Hamilton County, one of the fastest-growing counties in Indiana, by 2070.

Hamilton County Commissioner Mark Heirbrandt has lead the charge in studying the groundwater levels and water usage in his county after a state study projected a shortage in future decades. He believes the state should do more to better understand how best to use its water.
That caught the attention of Hamilton County Commissioner Mark Heirbrandt. The county has spent more than $2 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act money on an ongoing study of its groundwater levels and usage. Already the work has found instances of waste: A major mining operation is letting millions of gallons a day run off into the White River, for example, which doesn't replenish the aquifer. Officials are now working to engineer solutions.

"You look at what happened on the West Coast," Heirbrandt said. "They waited too long to address it. They were reactive, and now they have a crisis. We thought we need to be proactive. If we continue to grow, are we gonna have enough?"

Law of the biggest pump

Existing Indiana law is reactive, not proactive, when it comes to using water.

Nearly 4,300 users withdraw significant amounts of water from about 9,000 wells and surface-water intakes across the state. That does not include the thousands of individual residential wells.

Those big users alone withdrew more than 2 trillion gallons in 2022, enough to fill Geist Reservoir more than 300 times. What's more, according to DNR, those users have the capacity to withdraw more than 8 trillion gallons of water per year. That’s more than enough to fill three reservoirs the size of Geist every single day.

This graphic from the Indiana Finance Authority's Central Indiana Water study shows the water demand needs of the various counties in the central region. The various needs include the public water supply, industry and business, agriculture and more.
If a water user is planning to withdraw more than 100,000 gallons, it must notify DNR ― within three months of already starting to pump. No analysis is required in advance to study potential negative effects. No permit or approval is needed to move forward. Only if there is an issue after the fact is it addressed.

This is what allowed the Noblesville situation to play out. County Commissioner Heirbrandt fielded the brunt of the phone calls from neighbors. He visited them in person and remembers the wide-eyed panic on some of their faces.

"You go to your sink, and turn it on, and expect water to be there,” he said. “When it’s not, you kinda freak out."

Citizens Energy did conduct a study before beginning to pump at this location, the utility said, but there were no records on the residential wells to see that there would be negative impacts.

"You're only as good as the data you have," said Steve Berube, Citizens' director of water production, "and we had very limited data available to us when we did our study."

As soon as Citizens learned of the disruption, it worked with homeowners to remedy the situation. That included reimbursing Scoles and other residents for lowering their pumps or building new wells.

Scoles' well had been reliable for the 25 years he's lived in that neighborhood outside Noblesville. These days, the neighbors occasionally check in on one another, asking if their well is still doing alright.

Burney Scoles waters his yellow roses now that his well water has been restored in the Mill Run Creek neighborhood outside Noblesville on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2023, in Indiana. Scoles well ran dry last summer after Citizens Energy Group installed a water pumping station in an aquifer beneath a nearby property.
They've gotten their assurances from Citizens that if anything happens again, the utility would make them whole. So now they're all wondering how long it will take for the water to drop too low again. They can only dig so many wells.

"What’s the next remedy gonna be?" Scoles said.

Jeff Willman, Citizens' vice president for water operations, said those types of situations don't happen often. Still, he added "that’s the part where everyone needs to work together to use the water in a safe, reliable way for everyone."

Indiana may be blessed with water now, Cherkauer said, but things are changing rapidly and that may not always be the case. The state is seeing more population growth. It's attracting more business. And it's getting wetter sometimes and drier at others. It's a very different time and space, he said.

"But we are still in the same regulatory framework that we always have been," said Cherkauer, "which is that there is nothing done in advance. It's all regressive and all after the fact."

Slow adopters

Change is not easy and comes slowly in Indiana, especially on a topic as unsexy as water.

State Rep. Mike Aylesworth, R-Hebron, first entered politics as a Porter County commissioner in the 1970s, where he also served on the county's watershed steering committee. Numerous water bills he's proposed since 2014 at the Statehouse haven't gone anywhere.

This past legislative session, however, Aylesworth authored the state's first significant step toward some sort of regionalized water management structure: a bill establishing a county or counties' ability to create a regional "watershed development commission" funded by tax dollars.

"It's taken that long for this issue to get traction," he said. "I'm sort of a dollop in the ocean."

Eventually, he said, the state will need a more coordinated oversight effort. But the big picture can be hard to see for legislators, who operate on election cycles.

Plus, Indiana is a conservative state that values local control. Even millions of dollars of new public health money, approved this session, were eyed skeptically at first by county officials. Aylesworth's watershed law is an opt-in program and not an edict from the state. It's also funded by additional tax dollars, which officials are hesitant to levy.

"I don't envision a mad rush to do this," he said.

Wetlands restored Vincennes by Ray McCormick, a conservationist and farmer who's opposed to a 2021 law that stripped many wetlands protections away to make room for Hoosier developers. Since the law was passed, more than 250 acres of Indiana wetlands have been lost.
As water advocates wait for more comprehensive oversight, they worry the legislature has actually moved the state backwards. In 2021, the legislature passed a controversial law that stripped protections for many of the state's wetlands ― a critical ecosystem component that helps recharge water resources, prevent flooding and filter water. A new study from the Hoosier Environmental Council, an Indiana environmental advocacy group, says more than 250 acres of wetlands have been lost in just those two years.


Funding for new wells to better understand the state's water supply also has remained stagnant or relied on outside groups and universities to fill the gaps.

"The way we have been operating for decades is unsustainable in the current conditions," said Jill Hoffmann, executive director for the White River Alliance. "The time to act is now. The time to act was last year, 10 years ago, 20 years ago."

New water momentum

Prompted by the robust public discussion around the water issues in the LEAP district, the Indiana Chamber is now preparing an updated version of its 2014 water study, said Greg Ellis, vice president of energy and environmental policy.

The state has made progress on addressing infrastructure concerns and the cleanliness of drinking water, he said, but there's still a need for updated information on how much we have, where it is, and just how water is driving economic decisions.

He sees the study, scheduled for completion early next year, as a potential advocacy tool for policy-making. It's still the case that water management in Indiana is spread among many agencies.

"It can be a minefield if you don’t know what you’re doing," Ellis said. "That goes for the people being regulated, too."

Construction is under way at the new LEAP Innovation and Research District on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2023, at the intersection of Witt Rd. and Lower Simmons Rd. in Lebanon Ind.
State Rep. Sharon Negele, R-Attica, plans to file a bill in the next legislative session that would create a permitting process for water withdrawals larger than 10 million gallons a day ― a process that would require public notice and peer review. Her district includes Lafayette, where the IEDC plans to withdraw up to 100 million gallons of water a day to feed the LEAP district, so she's been knee-deep in residents' concerns about accountability.

"If there is plentiful water, we just have to make sure we’re good stewards about sharing it," she said. "Water resources are gonna be critical for our future and our growth in Indiana, so we have to be smart about this resource."

Hoffmann from the White River Alliance agrees. She said it’s like the state is allowing everyone to withdraw from a common checking account without knowing how much money is there, how much is coming in and when it will be deposited.

“If you explain it in the terms of a household budget like that,” Hoffmann said, “it’s understandable and seems rational."

Jill Hoffmann, executive director of the White River Alliance, is seen at the very back on the right. She listens to a speaker at the Indiana Water Summit, an annual event she has organized to raise awareness about Indiana's waterways and to prompt dialogue on how best to manage the state's water resources.
Hoffmann said the first step in getting a handle on this issue is to expand the monitoring network. That will help answer the question of how much water Indiana has and where. From there, policymakers can make more informed decisions.

“I think we should get nervous,” she said, “when we share a resource and don't know."