Return to: 2001 Yearend index

Guide's White River payout tops ecology slate

Anderson corporation's agreement to pay $6 million was 2nd-largest settlement of its type in state history.

BY DAVID ROHN

Published: 12-26-2001

From the air we breathed to the water we drank to the trees some of us lived in, 2001 was a busy year for Hoosiers on the environmental front.

And nowhere was there more news than White River.

Nearly 1 1/2 years after about 5 million fish died over a 50-mile stretch of river, a $14.2 million settlement was reached in June among Guide Corp. and lawyers for the state, the federal government and the city of Anderson.

Guide also agreed to plead guilty to criminal pollution charges.

The settlement, which includes $6 million for restoration of the river, was the second-largest environmental settlement in the state's history, said Lori Kaplan, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

"A $14 million penalty and federal criminal charges got a lot of people's attention," Kaplan said.

Linda Pence, the lawyer hired by the state to go after Guide, agreed.

"Many businesses now are firmly aware that this is a regulated area and that they should and must have environmental compliance programs," Pence said. "These have to be not just a program that looks good on paper and is good window dressing, but one that really works."

On Oct. 12, the day Guide entered guilty pleas with District Judge David Hamilton, the corporation and Crown Environmental Group reached a $2 million settlement with residents who live along the river and had filed a separate lawsuit.

That litigation, which will yield payouts of about $1,600 for those affected, was one of the first tests in the nation of the ability of individuals to recover damages even though state or federal officials also had started enforcement proceedings.

The river was the scene of other environmental headlines as well.

For the first time in 16 years, Indianapolis was granted a permit to discharge treated sewage into the river.

The city also wrangled with state and federal regulators about its $1 billion plan to eliminate the amount of untreated sewage that goes from sewers into local waterways when it rains.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials found 31 flaws with the city's plan to curb sewer overflows. Chief among them was criticism that the city should spend more to solve the problem sooner.

Algae also continued to be a problem in 2001, fouling drinking water in Eagle Creek and White River despite plans by Indianapolis Water Co. to aggressively treat its reservoirs with algae-killing chemicals.

Hoosiers also faced a new threat from a strain of tropical algae that gives off toxins that potentially are harmful to both people and animals.

Not long after the algae was discovered at Ball Lake in Steuben County in late August, lab tests showed its existence in Morse and Kokomo reservoirs -- both sources of municipal drinking water.

Although tests showed the algae wasn't giving off enough toxins to harm anyone, the state appointed a task force to look into the matter.

While resolution of White River matters was good news, opponents of gas-fired investor-owned merchant power plants took it on the chin in 2001.

In early April, state lawmakers defeated legislation to regulate siting of those plants. Two weeks later, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission refused to block construction of a merchant plant in Henry County that had run into opposition from local residents.

Although dejected, many Henry County residents vowed to continue their fight next year.

"I find it almost odd that people think we would go away," Jim McShirley said after the defeat.

Also drawing opposition was a new state rule to protect groundwater that is used as a source of drinking water by about 3.7 million Hoosiers.

Nearly a dozen years in the making, the rule passed in August was a compromise that many critics say is too lax. They've vowed to return to the legislature this year to seek tougher protections.

It was also the year of the trees.

In Bloomington, activists took up residence in trees for three months to protest development of a wooded area. That protest ultimately failed, with protesters hauled out of their perches in July, but a bid to halt logging in Yellowwood State Forest met with more success.

State authorities also thought they had made the first arrest in acts of ecoterrorism attributed to the Earth Liberation Front when they charged activist Frank Ambrose on Jan. 25 with spiking trees in Bloomington.

However, the charges against Ambrose, Midwest organizer for the American Lands Alliance, were dismissed in September.

As the state heads into 2002, many of these issues will resurface.

A federal criminal investigation of the White River fish kill continues. And though about 700,000 fish already have been returned to the river, there will be more restocking as a citizens advisory committee debates how to spend the $6 million in river restoration funds.

Return to: 2001 Yearend index