INDIANAPOLIS -- When more than a dozen wells dried up near the small town of Pars two summers ago, leaving residents without water to bathe or flush a toilet, local officials suspected the record heat and drought.
State investigators decided otherwise. At fault were large farming operations that drew huge amounts of water to irrigate fields and keep rain-starved crops from dying.
The incident was widely publicized, but state Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valpraiso, fears it was soon forgotten.
“Today, if you asked 100 people in Indiana about our water supply, 99 would say we don’t have a problem,” said Charbonneau, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environmental Affairs, who is leading a summer study committee on the subject.
A report released Friday by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce may change people’s minds.
The 80-page report details how demand for one of the state’s most abundant resources may outstrip supply in coming decades, if Indiana’s population and its manufacturing- and agricultural-dependent economy grow as projected.
“Our state’s economy is growing more diverse, but we always will make things,” said Chamber President Kevin Brinegar. “That takes large, reliable supplies of water. ... Water supply is definitely a jobs and economic development issue.”
The report calls for a statewide water management plan and an administrator to implement it.
Neither is a new idea in a state with 800-plus water utilities and no single agency in charge of water management. But Chamber officials hope they’ll be taken more seriously with the highly technical report.
The report was written by Bloomington-based hydrologist Jack Wittman in conjunction with the Chamber’s water advisory council whose members represent diverse interests from the Indiana Wildlife Federation to the steel industry.
The report echoes the 2013 findings of the legislature’s Sustainable Natural Resources Task Force, which warned that Indiana’s water resources were vulnerable in part because of the lack of a coordinated effort to protect and manage them.
Some key findings in the Chamber report:
• Indiana north of the Wabash River has an abundance of surface and ground water but is seeing a surge in competition for water as agricultural irrigation increases. The report says irrigation of row crops is the fastest growing sector of water use in the state.
• Southern Indiana has the least water resources in the state. The rivers, reservoirs and underground aquifers that do exist are separated by vast undersupplied areas, which is stalling economic development.
• In Central Indiana, described by Wittman as the “economic heart of the state,” water supplies are limited and won’t keep pace with rapid commercial and residential growth in Indianapolis and the surrounding counties. It predicts central Indiana will see an increase of 50 million gallons used per day by 2050.
The report also notes the impact of climate change, citing models that predict heat waves that are “more frequent, severe and sustained.” Hotter summers will cause faster evaporation from reservoirs, diminishing the water supply, while increasing demand for irrigation and potable water.
Chamber officials predict that if Indiana continues along its current path, a large portion of the state likely won’t have the local water resources necessary to meet growing needs.
The report, dubbed “Water and Economic Development in Indiana: Modernizing the State's Approach to a Critical Resource,” is posted on the Chamber’s website (www.indianachamber.com).
Brineger called on the General Assembly to start working on a plan to avoid a crisis and noted that other states, including water-abundant Minnesota, spend tens of millions of dollars on management plans.
Wittman said communities in northern, southern and central Indiana also must come up with a regional approach within a larger statewide plan. He downplayed the notion that water would have to be shipped from one end of the state to another, but he said he envisions a network where water is piped across county lines.
The logistics of water sharing can be expensive and contentious. In communities across Indiana, there are already unresolved disputes over who owns and regulates water, soaring rate increases, unregulated contaminants and discharges of untreated wastewater into rivers and streams.
Those disputes are why Indiana needs a more comprehensive approach, Wittman argued.
He said comprehensive water resource plans require significant investments of time and money. They involve wide-ranging efforts, from negotiating water rights to securing easements to pipe water across public and private property.
“It takes decades to build these systems. These are not things where you say, ‘Let’s build a garage and you have one at the end of the season,” he said. “I think we need to begin now.”