‘Stop the Water Steal’ enters the ring against LEAP plan

New group hopes to be rallying spot against IEDC’s plan to take Tippecanoe Co. water for LEAP District near Lebanon. Plus, great (stuff) below the surface of news of River Road’s reopening

• Thanks for support today from Purdue Convocations. The pageantry, emotion and captivating music of the Mexican celebration of Día de los Muertos will fill the Loeb Playhouse stage when the Los Angeles based ensemble Las Cafeteras brings Hasta La Muerte to Purdue.  Presenting its most theatrical show yet, with choreography, elaborate costumes and the familiar stylized skull face paint — this two-act performance examines the stages of grief and loss through the celebration of life and death. Friday, Nov. 3 at Loeb Playhouse. BUY TICKETS

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• Thanks, also, to Purdue Musical Organizations and the Purdue Christmas Show. This December, gather the whole family and celebrate 90 years of the Purdue Christmas Show. For nearly a century, this beloved holiday tradition has captivated audiences with its dazzling performances and heartwarming messages of love, hope and unity. Watch the stage come alive in the historic Elliott Hall of Music as PMO’s incredible student talent perform beautiful secular and sacred music alongside a live orchestra. December 1-3. BUY TICKETS HERE.

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‘STOP THE WATER STEAL’ ENTERS THE RING

A new Stop the Water Steal group formally unveiled its mission in West Lafayette Wednesday night, vowing to be a spanner in the works of Indiana Economic Development Corp.’s plans to pump and take tens of millions of gallons daily from Tippecanoe County and send it to the LEAP District near Lebanon.

About 40 people were there in a West Lafayette Public Library meeting room, where there was an air of just getting started in a long fight.

Donations came in for Stop the Water Steal yard signs. Letter writing to Gov. Eric Holcomb and assorted state legislators started almost immediately on makeshift stationary. And people shifted to one side of the second-floor room for a group photo, just to mark the day.

(Photo: Dave Bangert)

“We’re going to fight this,” Sandra Alvillar, one of the organizers, said. “We’re going to do all we can to not let this happen.”

Pitched as a nonprofit, nonpartisan rallying point for the assorted efforts coalescing in and around Greater Lafayette, Stop the Water Steal presented a way for people to blow off steam and find a place to land as they catch up on what has been, for the most part, a behind-closed-doors effort by the IEDC to get water to a massive LEAP District being built where there are scarce water resources in Boone County.

“It makes no sense,” David Sanders, a West Lafayette City Council, member said. Stop the Water Steal comes heavily branded under Sanders’ name on the group’s new website, after the city council passed a formal resolution in October opposing the pipeline plan.

“And they know it makes no sense,” Sanders said. “Or they would have been more open about it.”

Intera, a firm working on an IEDC-funded hydrology study, started work on a second test site, in range of County Road 700 West near Granville Bridge, in the past two weeks.