The Board’s 6-2 vote completed more than five years of work by stakeholders from across the state.

“ELPC commends the Board’s action today to better protect clean water in Indiana,” said Brad Klein, Senior Attorney, Environmental Law & Policy Center. “Indiana’s lakes and streams will now stay cleaner for many Hoosiers to enjoy.”

Klein said the new standards offer clarity to regulators tasked with protecting waterways.

“In addition to protecting clean water, these standards will prevent future controversies like the one that erupted in 2007 when BP proposed increasing ammonia discharges into Lake Michigan,” he said.

Klein commended the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for getting input from stakeholders in developing Clean Water Act antidegradation standards.

ELPC Deputy Director Kevin Brubaker, who leads ELPC's high-speed rail efforts, was aboard the Midwest's first high-speed rail train to leave Union Station.

On Feb. 15, 2012, high-speed rail travel arrived in the Midwest. The first high-speed train outside the Northeast United States departed Chicago’s Union Station at 7 a.m., traveling through Indiana and southwest Michigan to its destination in Kalamazoo, Mich. The 138-mile journey, which included a stop in New Buffalo, Mich., was completed in 2 hours, 8 minutes.

Kalamazoo is the highway point on the Chicago-Detroit passenger rail corridor. Eventually, officials say that 5.5-hour trip will be trimmed to 3.75 hours.Other high-speed rail corridors in the Midwest will include routes from Chicago to St. Louis and the Twin Cities.

Read more from CBS 2 Chicago and MLive.com.

“These rivers are examples of how clean water creates recreational jobs and businesses and improves the quality of life in Indiana,” said Howard Learner, Executive Director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. “Indiana officials should work to ensure all our rivers are this clean.”

Indiana’s weak state policies and lax enforcement have allowed the many of the state’s rivers and lakes to become fouled by algae blooms, toxins, sedimentation and dangerous pathogens, but the work of landowners, clean water advocates and some public agencies has helped protect these valuable waterways and the businesses that depend on them.

ELPC explains the value of Indiana’s clean rivers through the stories of people who depend on them like Jason Seward, owner of Clement’s Canoes on Sugar Creek and Tom Todd, a fishing guide who works on the East Fork of the White River. These stories, as well as video and professional photos are all available at www.INourwater.org

The website will give Indiana residents the tools to tell their own stories about water and take action to clean up waterway across the state. ELPC is working to increase awareness of the pollution issues facing Indiana and engage the public in calling for solutions.

Three of Indiana’s Cleanest Rivers

1. Sugar Creek. Sugar Creek is home to a rare variety of fish and wildlife, including bald eagles, blue herons and over 70 species of fish. Indiana’s Health Rivers INitiative will protect 43,000 acres of land along this ecologically critical waterway.  Jason Seward is one of the people that depend on the water quality in Sugar Creek for a living. Seward owns Clements Canoe and Outdoor Center, one of several canoe liveries on Sugar Creek.

2. The Tippecanoe River. The Tippecanoe River meanders through northern Indiana for 225 miles before emptying into the Wabash River. Biologists consider the Tippecanoe a bench mark for what healthy rivers in the region should look like today.   Tom Denham’s family has benefitted from the clean waters of the Tippecanoe since the 1930’s, when they bought land along the river near Winamac and began renting out cabins. Over the years, Denham has seen water quality improve and wildlife thrive on the river.

3. East Fork of the White River. The fishing on the East Fork of the White River is good enough to attract customers from as far away as New York and Hawaii and to keep fishing guide Tom Todd busy throughout the season.

Todd works on a meandering stretch of the East Fork between Lawrenceport and Hindostan Falls. Todd’s business depends on good water quality, and he says the East Fork is cleaner today than it’s been in the past.

The BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has awakened many Americans to the dangers of our addiction to oil. The latest polls show that most Americans want to find cleaner and safer ways to power their cars and heat their homes. The good news is that a shift to more fuel efficient cars and trucks will both improve the environment and boost our economy.

Under the new federal greenhouse gas reduction and fuel economy standards that were finalized in Spring, the average fuel economy for passenger cars will increase from 27.5 mpg in 2009 to 37.8 mpg by 2016 – an improvement of almost 40 percent. Building cleaner cars will reduce lifetime greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles produced between 2012 and 2016 by more than 655 million tons. That’s a big step forward.

The shift toward cleaner cars provides an opportunity for new manufacturing centers and product lines in Indiana, as automakers develop more efficient technologies and better pollution controls. In Elkhart, for example, former RV builders will now be manufacturing electric vehicles for Think motors.  Think is planning to produce about 20,000 vehicles annually in Elkhart by 2013.  Likewise, just outside of Indianapolis, EnerDel will soon employ up to 1,400 people manufacturing batteries for electric vehicle.

Indiana’s pool of highly trained autoworkers will be building the cars – and the economy – of the future.  These good manufacturing jobs are “green jobs” for our future.

The new federal technology-forcing and innovation-encouraging standards for the cars of the future are expected to save as much as 11.6 billion gallons of gasoline per year by 2016. That’s equivalent to half the oil that the U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia each year. That reduction in gasoline purchases will save consumers around $35 billion annually at the pump if gas costs $3 per gallon.

The transition to cleaner cars should be accompanied by deploying modern technologies to clean up and diversify our electricity generating sources. Driving an electric car doesn’t help clean up the environment as much if it’s charged by electricity generated by older, highly-polluting coal plants.  We can and should use clean power to charge plug-in hybrids and other electric vehicles.  Let’s build charging stations powered mostly by wind and solar energy

Solar energy is most available on the hot, sunny afternoons when power market prices are highest and the power is needed most. If electric vehicle charging stations are powered by solar, the pollution equation works well. Let’s try to locate charging stations in places where there is good solar access. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission and the Legislature should also adopt robust “net metering” rates and standards for the charging stations to sell valuable solar-generated power back into the grid when it is not fully used for charging cars.

Indiana can and should be a leader in gaining the jobs of the future from building new, cleaner cars that increase our energy independence, reduce pollution and save us money at the pump. Getting cleaner, more efficient cars on the roads is a key step forward for reducing our oil dependence. As the BP oil spill disaster unfortunately reminds us daily, business as usual is not the right path for our economy and environment.  Let’s be smarter and do better.

INourwater.org – Stories of Indiana’s Polluted Lakes and Rivers

Promoting Alternatives to the I-69 Boondoggle

Implementing the Clean Water Act

ELPC’s Clean Water Act implementation work in Indiana, supported by the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, includes:

• Building citizen and local capacity to more effectively participate in the policy process
• Advancing the state’s under-developed “anti-degradation” rules
• Improving, upgrading and adding new use designations and water quality criteria, and
• Implementing and enforcing existing state clean water regulations.

ELPC attorneys are working with our partners at the Hoosier Environmental Council, Save the Dunes, the Sierra Club and other Indiana organizations to develop new “anti-degradation” rules that would correct future problems like the one involving the BP-Whiting refinery that generated so much controversy a few years ago. We also are following issues related to nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the Hoosier State.

INourwater.org – Stories of Indiana’s Polluted Lakes and Rivers

INourwater.org is an ELPC project designed to help people tell the stories of polluted rivers and lakes in Indiana. The website gives the public the tools to tell their own stories about water pollution and take action to clean up waterways across the state. One such story is from Indiana native Scott Rodgers, a homeowner on the Geist Reservoir who’s working to prevent the dangerous algae blooms that threaten the reservoir where he boats, and Marjorie Vance, who is trying to prevent a factory farm from being built near her home. These stories, photos and videos are all available on the website INourwater.org

ELPC is working to increase awareness of the pollution issues facing the state and engage the public in calling for solutions like statewide pollution limits for phosphorus and better water quality standards for factory farms. We worked with residents and water experts across the state to tell the changing story of rivers and lakes and their impact on people’s quality of life in Indiana.

Promoting Alternatives to the I-69 Boondoggle

ELPC is working with local environmental, farm, business and taxpayers’ organizations to prevent one of the nation’s great boondoggles: the controversial proposed “new terrain” Interstate 69 highway from Indianapolis to Evansville, in Southwestern Indiana. NBC Nightly News called this billion-dollar highway a “Fleecing of America.” We are fighting for a plan to upgrade existing highways that would create a travel time between Indianapolis and Evansville only ten minutes longer than the same trip made on the proposed new highway. This alternative, using Interstate 70 and an upgraded US 41, would save $600 million of taxpayers’ money. It would be far less damaging to farmland, to the environment, and to Indianapolis, Bloomington, and other communities.

The decision is a victory for ELPC and the other citizens and environmental groups who petitioned EPA to object to the permit in August 2008 on the grounds that it did not accurately account for the large increases in dangerous air pollution that would be caused by BP’s expansion of the refinery. ELPC filed the petition with a coalition that included Hoosier Environmental Council, Natural Resources Defense Council, Save the Dunes Council, Sierra Club, Susan Eleuterio and Tom Tsourlis.

BP began a major expansion of the Whiting Refinery in 2008 in order to process dirty Canadian tar sands crude oil at the facility. The expansion would make the refinery the largest refiner of tar sands oil in the U.S. and would increase numerous traditional air pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter. In addition, the expansion would create approximately as much new global warming pollution as a new 300-400 megawatt coal plant, about a forty percent increase from current refinery levels.

“BP needs to come clean about what this expansion really will mean for clean air and public health.” said ELPC Staff Attorney Meleah Geertsma.

Read the Press Release Here

ELPC Executive Director Howard Learner told the Indianapolis Star that the report shows progress, but that moving forward, the city should commit to firm goals for important areas such as reducing waste and improving air quality. “The city needs to step up and lead by example,” Learner said.

Read the article in the Indianapolis Star