How clean are Indiana's waterways?

How clean are Indiana's waterways? About a mile south of Lucas Oil Stadium in Downtown Indianapolis, Tony Chao stood fishing one recent morning on the bank of the White River. And that concerns environmentalists who say state officials, prompted by a well established reluctance to regulate industrial polluters -- particularly the coal-fired power plants that dump more than 4,000 pounds of mercury into the environment in a single year -- are putting the public at risk. "It's not a cheap process, and we want it to be scientifically defensible," he said. We care about getting it right. The surest way to remove mercury from the environment would be to ban coal-fired power plants outright and switch to cleaner burning fuels such as natural gas -- at a cost ratepayers likely wouldn't appreciate, said Thomas P. Getting the remaining PCBs out of the state's waterways, Simon said, would similarly entail costly dredging, cleaning and "literally moving tons and tons of sediment. "IDEM gets hammered a lot," Simon said. "Go to the store," he said. Call Star reporter Ryan Sabalow at (317) 444-6179. About a mile south of Lucas Oil Stadium in Downtown Indianapolis, Tony Chao stood fishing one recent morning on the bank of the White River. IndyStar's Headlines are now available on Facebook and Twitter. It's also an example, she said, of a lack of uniform federal standards that would force states to do more to clean their troubled waters. Roy said even if states do come up with pollution plans, lack of funding and political will means they can languish on shelves for decades. Because each state is allowed to do things differently, it also makes it difficult to determine which ones are actually making progress -- or to compare Indiana with other states. Roy didn't hold out a lot of hope for Indiana on that front, especially after learning Gov. In a draft report about to be submitted to the U. Environmental Protection Agency, state environmental management officials say there are nearly 1,000 stretches of Indiana streams, rivers and lakes where fish have PCBs and mercury in their bodies. As such, she said, Minnesota's coal plants, mines and other industrial facilities were ordered to reduce their mercury output from more than 3,000 pounds in 2005 to 789 pounds by 2025. Without a specific pollution plan, Indiana's goals are a lot less lofty. IDEM officials say the state's mercury emissions are required to see a 14 percent decrease by 2018, leaving Indiana with 4,300 pounds of the toxic element still emitted into the state's air and water each year. Even though the EPA gives states leeway to prioritize which contaminants to target, Walter says, it's widely expected the federal government will soon begin forcing states to come up with plans similar to Minnesota's. "I think the delaying is not going to help," she said. A trade group president representing investor-owned electric utilities said the EPA also has recently introduced emission standards that will force companies to put smokestack scrubbers on most of Indiana's coal-burning power plants by 2016. "Work's being done," said Stan Pinegar, president of the Indiana Energy Association. The way the contaminants are listed in the EPA report, state officials say, also means Indiana will need to eventually come up with a pollution-reduction plan -- just not right now. Mercury finds its way into water from outside sources, too -- power plants and other polluters across the globe, said Bruno Pigott, IDEM's assistant commissioner of water quality. Find coupons, list your stuff for free, and discover hot deals. Make use of our mobile sites and iPhone apps to keep updated with what's going on around Central Indiana.According to the EPA, coal-burning power plants are the largest human-caused source of mercury in the U. , accounting for further than 50 % of all the nation's airborne mercury emissions. In Indiana, coal power plants released more than 4,000 pounds of the element into the environment in 2010, the last year numbers were compiled by IDEM. He called it part of a longstanding pattern of inaction among state environmental regulators, who would rather grouse about federal agencies' lack of funding and guidance rather than actually doing something to get toxins out of the state's waterways. For mercury at least, he said, that means forcing one industry to curb how much gets dumped into the environment. "We know what the problem is," Quinn said. Natalie Roy, executive director of the Washington, D. - based Clean Water Network, said Indiana is clearly trying to "punt" responsibility of cleaning up its waterways. "That's pathetic," she said. "This is about water, for God's sake," she said. French, of the Hoosier Environmental Council, said cleaning up Indiana's streams and lakes also would help the economy. She said not only is it fundamental for Indiana residents to have clean streams and rivers because they're the source of the state's drinking water, fishing is a major part of the state's heritage and culture, something that helps drive the tourism industry and spur job growth. Eating fish caught from local streams and lakes, she said, also could help poor Hoosiers when times get tough. Chao, the White River fisherman, said he had no problem fishing in a waterway so dirty officials had to put up warning signs. For him, fishing is for fun, not food. But, overall, I think IDEM has done a good job, given the resources, given the manpower, given the constraints. But leaders in other states have devoted cash and manpower to draft plans geared toward reducing PCBs and mercury in their fish. Rebecca Walter, mercury program coordinator for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, said her state's reason for coming up with a mercury reduction plan was simple enough: In a tourism-dependent state that touts itself as the "Land of 10,000 lakes," it didn't look fantastic that 820 of them had health advisories warning of mercury-contaminated fish. Small levels of mercury and PCBs build up over time in the bodies of animals and people. "I do not think people eat the fish here," Chao said. And for good reason. Mercury and PCBs have at least one thing in common: They wash into waterways and are absorbed by micro-organisms at a bottom of a waterway's food chain. This stretch of the White River -- like so many other Hoosier waterways -- contains species of fish that have tested positive for mercury and other pollutants called PCBs, synthetic chemicals so toxic federal officials banned them more than three decades ago. The source of PCB pollution is less easy to pinpoint. That there are concerns about the water quality of Indiana's rivers, lakes and streams is not new. But while other states have created action plans specifically geared toward reducing the contaminants in fish, Indiana hasn't. At the heart of current debate is the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's handling of mercury and PCB contamination in a biennial water pollution report soon to be submitted to the EPA. How clean are Indiana's waterways? Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 05/06/2012