IEDC gets an earful on plan to take Tippecanoe Co. water

Facing a Greater Lafayette crowd for the first time, Indiana Economic Development Corp. gets grilled over pipeline idea that would take water near the Wabash and ship it to developments near Lebanon

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IEDC GETS AN EARFUL ON PLAN TO TAKE TIPPECANOE CO. WATER

After a day relegated to fielding constituent phone calls about the status of the Indiana Economic Development Corp.’s plans to tap and take tens of millions of gallons of water a day near Granville Bridge – and the what-are-you-doing-about-it protests that followed – Tippecanoe County Commissioner Tom Murtaugh was decompressing Thursday night as people filed out of Church Alive in southern Lafayette.

It was a full house, with roughly 350 chairs in the sanctuary. A hundred or so more who couldn’t get in had listened from the narthex, as a hydrologist and IEDC official faced a Greater Lafayette crowd for the first time since initial test well results for came back last week for pipeline idea to feed the massive LEAP District development near Lebanon.

It also was the first time in public in Tippecanoe County for the IEDC since local officials found out, in roundabout ways, nearly a year ago that tens of millions of gallons of water a day from aquifers here could be heading to Boone County, two counties away. And that there was little anyone could do to stop it.

“We’ve been trying to get the state to understand just how big of a deal this has been for people around here and how much people just don’t trust it,” Murtaugh said. “Tonight, I think they might have seen what we’ve been telling them.”

A full house at Church Alive in southern Lafayette listens to a presentation Thursday on a water study of the Wabash River aquifer. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

With some of Greater Lafayette’s most outspoken progressives liberally sprinkled into a public session arranged by We the People Indiana Revival, a group committed to conservative policies and views, the collective upshot Thursday night boiled down to:

Hold on, now.