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The state is courting high-tech investments, but a new industrial park may lack enough water. Opponents say piping it from miles away might dry out residential wells.
When Indiana officials created a new industrial park to lure huge microchip firms to the state, they picked a nearly 10,000-acre site close to a booming metropolis, a major airport and a university research center.
But the area is missing one key ingredient to support the kinds of development the state wants to attract: access to the huge amounts of water that microchip makers might need.
Officials floated a plan to pipe in enormous volumes of water from an aquifer about 40 miles away. But the plan raised concerns about straining groundwater supplies at the source, prompting widespread calls to scrap the idea, at least until more studies can be carried out.
Last week, state officials said they would do just that, with Gov. Eric Holcomb and other leaders pledging to move on the project only after studies could be completed to ensure any withdrawals are sustainable.
“The data — yet still to be gathered — will drive any or all future decisions,” Gov. Holcolmb said in a news release.
The fight in Indiana is an example of increased tension over water as urban growth, industrial demands and spotty regulation collide in communities that are putting increasing strain on their limited groundwater supplies. Overlying all of it is a changing climate and the potential for more erratic weather, including droughts like one that dried out the state in 2012.
