Gordon Haag has lived on about 20 acres in Hendricks County for close to four decades. The pastures have butterflies, deer and horses, old oak trees line the road and the property is surrounded by farms.
The area could soon be altered: Citizens Energy Group has proposed building a water booster station and two 1.5-million-gallon tanks nearby. The $48 million pump project is part of the infrastructure the Indianapolis utility needs to help bring water to the LEAP development district in Boone County.
“It’s stayed a rural area, which has been really special,” Haag said of his home just north of Indianapolis. “The pump station is a change of life. It’s gonna change the whole area for the worse.”
Haag is organizing neighbors to push back against the pumping station.
Before coming to Hendricks County, the utility pursued at least one other site for the project. That location, in a nearby Whitestown subdivision, also faced pushback from neighbors.
The Hendricks County Area Plan Commission is expected to review the site plan at a meeting Oct. 13. The meeting follows a public hearing in August, when commissioners criticized the project but seemed unsure whether they had authority to prevent it.
Municipalities have limited power over utility construction. They can enforce zoning rules, but cannot do so in a way that unreasonably interferes with a utility’s service.
“The Supreme Court decided a long time ago that utilities have the right to locate where they can serve best,” said Timothy Dombrosky, director of the Hendricks County Planning and Building Department. “We still have authority over development standards, but we don't regulate location.”
The fight over where to place the pumping station is the latest controversy over how to supply water to LEAP. The technology park, which the Indiana Economic Development Corp. created, is located in Boone County because of its proximity to Indianapolis and Purdue University in West Lafayette.
The fight over getting water to LEAP
When Eli Lilly announced a $2 billion expansion into the district four years ago, Lebanon Mayor Matt Gentry called it a “game-changer.” When the city council approved tax breaks for a Meta data center in the development, Gentry said it was “a great opportunity for the city.”
But plans to supply fresh water and discharge wastewater from the LEAP district have faced vocal opposition from Central Indiana residents.
State leaders pulled back from a controversial proposal to draw water from the Wabash River aquifer in Tippecanoe County, instead reaching an agreement for Indianapolis-based Citizens to supply water from its existing sources across the region.
That plan has sparked opposition from Indianapolis area residents and advocates, who say the project could harm Eagle Creek Reservoir and the city's water supply. Lebanon Utilities announced it would not discharge water into Eagle Creek Park amid opposition. But Citizens remains committed to sending water to Boone County.
The agreement between Citizens and Lebanon Utilities calls for the Indianapolis utility to begin supplying up to 2 million gallons of water per day by 2027 and up to 25 million gallons of water per day by 2031. The Hendricks County project is part of the infrastructure to bring that water to the industrial park.
Why Citizens is building a booster station
The booster station will add energy to water to keep it pressurized as it moves through the system, according to Bruce Cooley, a program manager for Citizens Energy Group who presented the plan to the Hendricks County Area Plan Commission.
“The location of these facilities is very intentional,” Cooley told the commission at a meeting Aug. 11, adding that the booster must be within a certain area from a “hydraulic perspective.”
“We found a willing seller here in this particular location, and that's the reason we're before you here today,” Cooley said.
Neighbors speak out
Some residents say the proposed booster will harm the nearby farms and homes, changing the character of the agricultural area and reducing property values.
Heidi Hackett can see the proposed site of the booster station from her kitchen window. She said the area attracts birds such as purple martins.
“I hope that they’ll return, but there’s a lot of questions that I don’t think are answered,” Hackett said. “What’s the impact on the purple martins? I don’t know. But I feel like I’m concerned about it, and they are just one piece of nature out here.”
At the Hendricks County plan commission’s August meeting, residents came out to raise concerns about the project, including the appearance, noise, light and drainage. Others objected to the fact that the booster is designed to get water to LEAP and would not provide water to the property owners along the pipeline.
Mike Oles, III, lives nearby in Brownsburg. He was one of the speakers at the August meeting. He said he has seen years of discussion surrounding LEAP in Tippecanoe, Boone and Marion counties. But he described the Hendricks booster station as a “rush job.”
“This is a little bit of a slap in the face to do this so quickly,” he said.
New cost estimate 65% higher
Citizens purchased the Hendricks County property from a willing seller. That is in contrast with an earlier proposed location, where the utility sought to take land from the Eagle’s Nest homeowners association by eminent domain.
The Eagle’s Nest site had also met with opposition from nearby residents, and in November, the Whitestown Board of Zoning in Boone County denied a request from Citizens for a zoning variance to build a chain-link fence at the Eagle’s Nest location.
At some point after that, Citizens moved the proposed booster location to a nearby site in Hendricks County.
In an emailed statement, Citizens spokesperson Benjamin Easley said the Eagle’s Nest location was “just one of more than 10 options evaluated as a site for a booster station to support this portion of our northwest water supply service area.”
“The parcel Citizens has purchased is the only site that was bought for the Royalton Booster Station and Tanks project, and it meets all our requirements,” he said, referring to the Hendricks site.
Citizens estimated that its latest plan for the booster station would cost $48 million — about 65% more than the Eagle’s Nest site, according to reports from the State Revolving Fund Loan Programs.
Easley wrote that the cost has not increased, and the new price tag is “only a rightsizing of the preliminary engineer’s estimate based on better market data closer to the time of construction.”
“With construction closer in view, a more detailed estimate has now been updated,” he wrote.
FPI News freelance photographer Doug McSchooler contributed reporting.
This article first appeared on FPI News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
