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Indiana wants to steal 100 million gallons/day of water from Greater Lafayette [1]

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Date: 2023-10-19  

The city of Lebanon, Indiana has decided to establish an industrial park outside of town. One of the potential users is Eli Lilly and Co., the pharmaceutical company that left poisoned water for a subdivision south of Purdue before selling out to Evonik. The other is a semiconductor plant.

The park wants to use 100 million gallons of water per day, pumped from the Taeys Aquifer. To put it into context, the Wabash River sees about 2000-2500 cubic feet per second (cfs) flow past Lafayette when the Wabash is at 2.5 feet (low normal). 100,000,000 gallons/day / (7.5 gal/cu ft) / (86400 s/d) is 154 cfs. In short, water equal to 6% of the Wabash’s flow would be diverted to Lebanon. To make things worse, the plan is to extract 100,000,000 gal/day from us, use it for industrial process, then discharge the effluvient down the White River toward Lake Monroe near Bloomington. We already have some of the dirtiest water in the United States. A poison ivy berry on this sundae is that the water would not be taken from the Wabash, but rather from the Taeys Aquifer, the remains of a preglacial river whose water is used by Purdue and notably purer than the stuff coming out of near-surface wells.



Politically, it’s sort of a strange beast. The Tea Party, Indiana Revival and MAGA Hoosiers in the area brought up the issue first and loudest, but the local Democratic Party is approaching unanimity in agreeing with MAGA on this issue. (Must...shut...up...about...leopards...eating...faces). The state is badly gerrymandered on the Republican side, and there are rumors that the GOP is pressuring Republicans into supporting this. The relationship between Mayor Gentry of Lebanon and Governor Holcomb with the Indiana economic development nabobs is as incestuous as a line of Egyptian pharaohs, as appropriate for a pharaonic project.



Other, more reasonable options such as the companies recycling the water in situ, building reservoirs on the three creeks passing through Boone County, or building a pipeline from Geist reservoir that does not have to pump the water 250 feet upward over 50 miles have not been considered.



The theory of semiconductor factories in the US is good, but insourcing the environmental work to one of the most polluted and dirtiest states in the Union is not a good idea.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/19/2200474/-Indiana-wants-to-steal-100-million-gallons-day-of-water-from-Greater-Lafayette?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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