INDIANAPOLIS — Uneven water distribution throughout the state and plans for a pipeline to supply water to the LEAP Lebanon Innovation District in Boone County have prompted questions about water availability and driven discussions about a state water plan.
Back in 2014, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce advised the Indiana General Assembly to implement a comprehensive statewide water plan. In the decade since, that advice has largely not been acted upon.
But as plans for the LEAP project have moved forward and the chamber issued a new report this year, more Hoosiers have started to pay attention.
The state plan, officials have said, would be a living document that would provide decisionmakers with a bird’s-eye view of the state’s water resources. It would essentially be like a municipal comprehensive plan but would focus solely on water. Assembling such a plan, experts say, requires implementing robust data tracking, updating long-range climate forecasts and verifying innumerable bits of other information.
Central Indiana was the subject of a recent water availability study commissioned by the Indiana Finance Authority, which expanded the study’s scope earlier this year to include the Wabash headwaters region, which includes Grant, Blackford, Jay and other counties, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
Other areas of the state were studied earlier, such as the southeast region, which includes Clark, Floyd, Bartholomew and Scott counties.
Should the Indiana General Assembly heed the chamber’s recommendations, the state would be divided into regions.
Each region would have a committee of stakeholders, including business leaders, local utility representatives and others, according to Theresa Lundewe, one of the report’s authors and a principal scientist for INTERA, a Texas-based environmental and water resource consulting firm with an office in Bloomington.
How exactly the state could be divided into regions was a key point of discussion at a recent water summit hosted by the White River Alliance.
Several speakers at the event noted regions would likely have little to do with political boundaries on a map, but would be based on a body of water’s path through a given area.
A final decision would rest with the Indiana General Assembly. It could take such a process years to bear the fruit of a statewide comprehensive water resources plan.
Other speakers at the summit acknowledged that water use in one county can impact life in a neighboring county.
For example, Hamilton County’s population is expected to nearly double to about 720,000 by 2070, according to County Surveyor Kenton C. Ward, a presenter at the summit. The water supply would need to increase by 80% to meet the projected demand, he said.
A decade ago, the state chamber suggested that water infrastructure in central Indiana should be updated with additional storage facilities, including reservoirs.
But traditional reservoirs can be costly to create and maintain, according to Jeff Willman, vice president of Citizens Energy Group, which covers a large portion of the central Indiana region.
Citizens has taken a more cost-effective approach, converting a stone quarry near Geist Reservoir into a reservoir, adding 3.2 billion gallons to its storage system.
“We were able to build this at about 5% of the cost it would take to build Geist, a traditional reservoir,” Willman said.
“We could do 20 of these quarry storage projects for the cost (of a traditional reservoir),” he added. “These have great value. You can get it done in three to five years.”
Reservoirs frequently act as emergency water sources during extreme weather conditions, including droughts.
Equally effective is drought planning, which can be aided by use of hydrological data, such as a water source’s flow rate. Measurements can be taken by monitors placed near the source, usually on private property with permission, Willman explained.
The monitors provide officials with real-time data that can be used for planning.
Indiana isn’t the only state discussing water planning. Minnesota and Texas have their own statewide plans.
Those states provide a basis for the chamber’s report, Lundewe said, because both adopted a regional approach.
A state- of-the-art water plan could be costly for Indiana. Minnesota paid $50 million and Texas $500 million annually to implement and monitor their comprehensive water plans, according to the 2014 chamber report. Current cost estimates for the two states are not available.
“The current approach (in Indiana) is simple and economical, but it cannot address the questions of long-term regional water availability or water management,” a passage of the 2024 chamber report reads.
“By waiting for consequences before acting, the impacts of new development in the basin may not become evident until investments have already been made.”