Yorktown joins Daleville in voting no on Mounds Lake Commission

Opponents of the $440 million reservoir project filled the council chambers to capacity Monday evening with a large number of people standing outside the meeting room.

The council voted 6-1 to not participate in the creation of the Mounds Lake Commission, which would have been tasked with raising $28 million for a Phase 3 study and to determine if the reservoir project would move forward.

Yorktown joined Daleville in voting not to participate. The Daleville Town Council vote earlier this month made the creation of the commission in its current proposed form unworkable with only Anderson and Chesterfield voting to join the commission.

Although there were no comments from council members prior to the vote, several of them commented afterward.

Councilman Rick Glaub, who cast the lone no vote on the resolution, said he supported the creation of the commission from its inception.

“I thought it was a stroke of genius,” he said of the proposal that would have created a 2,100-acre lake extending from Anderson to Yorktown.

Anderson's Mounds Mall area is in need of redevelopment, he said, noting the reservoir would have met future water needs of the region and provided recreational opportunities in the area.

“I don’t think it’s completely dead,” Glaub said of the project. “It was thinking out of the box, something that had evaded the community.”

He said the reservoir project would have stopped the decline of population and the “brain drain” in Madison and Delaware counties.

Glaub said he supported from the project from the start, but was not surprised by the council vote.

He said the Army Corps of Engineers would have been the final authority on whether the reservoir project could take place.

Councilwoman Laura Vise said her mind was made up against the project for a long time, knowing the history of Delco Remy in Anderson.

“It would have been nice to have something like this close to our community,” Vise said, adding she had environmental concerns about the project.

Rich Lee, president of the council, said the Town Council indicated all along that it would be the last government entity to vote on the formation of the commission.

“This was a tough issue for us,” he said. “There was a lot of information, some inaccurate and some good. I couldn’t understand why people wanted to hurry through the decision.”

Councilman Bob Ratchford said the idea sounded good.

“You can have a dream, but you have to finance a dream,” he said. “We made the right decision for our community.”

Linda Hanson, spokeswoman for the Muncie/Delaware County League of Women Voters, said the Yorktown vote meant that Delaware County spoke with one voice on the reservoir proposal.

The Delaware County commissioners and Delaware County Council both came out in opposition to the reservoir concept.

The Heart of the River, which is opposed to the project, said in a press statement the group commended the council for showing leadership and common sense in adopting the resolution not to participate in the commission.

“We are glad the Yorktown town council would rather see a free-flowing river than take a chance on this boondoggle of a proposal,” the statement read. “We look forward to helping Yorktown and Daleville explore the Mounds Greenway proposal in the future.”

Opponents to the reservoir project have proposed a network of trails that would extend from Muncie to Anderson along the White River corridor.