- Green comes in many shades, and contrary to what you might hear from some stylists and interior decorators, they don't always go together.

Take, for example, the seeming incompatibility of nature's hue and the color of money, a clash that's on near constant display at the Indiana State House.

Hi, I'm Jon Schwantes, and on this edition of "Indiana Lawmakers," we'll examine the tension between two shades of green, or I should say, policy priorities, that, more often than not, seem to defy compromise.

One, the desire to protect the quality of Indiana's air, soil, and water.

And two, the push to make our state the shovel-ready darling of regulation-wary builders and businesses.

No need to adjust the tint on your screen, it's just "Indiana Lawmakers," from the State House to your house.

(triumphant music) This session, as in most, you don't have to look hard to find an example of the previously mentioned clash of greens.

All of the elements were front and center in the debate, some would say truncated debate, over House Bill 1383, the very first piece of legislation to reach the governor's desk this year.

The measure deals with Indiana's wetlands, those grass-filled marshes and bogs that, depending on your point of view, are either an essential part of Indiana's ecosystem, not to mention Mother Nature's best defense against flooding or an unnecessary impediment to economic growth and the construction of affordable housing.

This much is not up for debate.

Before European settlers arrived, nearly one-fourth of modern-day Indiana was a wetland.

That acreage has since shrunk by some 85% and the trend is only accelerating thanks to legislative changes made three years ago and a 2023 ruling by the US Supreme Court that gutted federal protection of such lands.

HB 1383 turned some Class III state wetlands, which are currently protected, into Class II wetlands which have fewer safeguards.

The proposal sped through both chambers of the General Assembly, arriving at Governor Eric Holcomb's desk before most bills had even had a chance to emerge from their house of origin.

Environmental groups urged Holcomb to veto the measure, but he signed it without delay calling it, quote, "a collaborative effort that strikes a necessary balance."

Once a new law takes effect July 1, defenders of the state's wetlands could be left, well, pretty much high and dry.

HB 1383 was just one of a number of measures introduced this session to focus on the environment, natural resources, and energy sustainability.

Those proposals dealt with a wide range of topics including the development of farmland, the creation of dedicated bus lanes, and the regulation of PFAS or so-called forever chemicals.

There was even a second wetland's bill, one that grants tax breaks to property owners who voluntarily set aside such lands.

It's now awaiting the governor's signature.

Joining me to weigh in on, well, all of the above are Gabe Filippelli, chancellor's professor of Earth Sciences at Indiana University, and executive director of the university's Environmental Resilience Institute.

Democratic representative Matt Pierce of Bloomington, ranking minority member of the House committee that handles energy and utilities.

And Environmental Geologists Nick Soltis, a member of the Physics and Earth Space Science faculty at the University of Indianapolis.

Thank you for being here.

It's an important topic.

But we saw the wetlands legislation, some which environmentalists favored, some which they didn't want.

We saw efforts to make it easier to extend, say, old lead lines or replace them, I should say, with something that's less toxic.

The PFAS issue came up.

Water was front and center, certainly the LEAP district and the notion of transferring potentially billions of gallons of water from an aquifer up near Lafayette to do this project in Lebanon.

Matt Pierce, you've been watching environmental issues for a long time.

What's with water?

I mean, are we getting it right in Indiana when it comes to water?

- Well, I mean, there are a few bright spots in the lead line area and that utilities have been willing to step up and the legislatures enabled them to create a method in which they can spread their cost of replacing individual lead lines and people's property, which normally would be the responsibility of the property owner.

This would allow them to be able to spread that cost among all the rate payers and just replace all the lines because the Environmental Protection Agency is gonna give everyone about 10 years to get all these lead service lines out of the system.

So that's one bright spot.

- And it also helps when you have out-of-state landlords, right?

Who loan a property, who've said, "You can't find me, so I'm not gonna agree to pay."

- And that was what some legislation was about this year, essentially saying is if you got an absentee landlord you can't get ahold of or they're just not cooperating, then we create some legal mechanisms for the utilities just to be able to get in there and replace the lines anyway, because the tenants are the ones drinking the water that's coming through those lines, and so that's an important thing as well.

So I'd say that's one bright spot.

Unfortunately, in general, when it comes to water quality in the state, the legislatures just generally ignored the whole issue.

- Nick Soltis, water.

Again, I know everything having to do with the earth is your bailiwick.

So I mean, again, I'll ask a version of the same question.

Are we getting it right here in Indiana in terms of how we're managing water?

Do we have enough of it?

Are we allocating it properly?

Are we worried about things such as flooding and filtration, which certainly was front and center in the wetlands discussion.

- It definitely was.

And you know, water is a huge issue, right?

It's a solvent of life.

Like, we can't have life without water.

And water's really great at a lot of things.

It carries just about anything it picks up with it, right?

And the thing that struck me with the wetlands conversation, because we have these issues in Indiana with flooding, with water quality, and one of the best natural ways to clean water, to manage water, to store excess water is wetlands, right?

And it's a resource too, right?

We think of resources as things like coal or whatever, but water is a resource.

We need water and water can actually provide a lot of ecosystem services, right?

So wetlands, for example, they work like giant sponges.

When you have excess water, they kind of suck in that water and they really do a lot to protect us from flooding and things like that.

On top of that, there these really, really productive ecosystems.

They're up there with coral reefs and rainforests with the things they do for life and the amount of organisms that live there, including a ton of microbes that are really good at cleaning that water and getting stuff we don't want out of it.

- Except last time I checked, Geist and Eagle Creek we're a little short on the coral reef.

- Yeah, a little short on that, right?

So when it comes to biodiversity and stuff, wetlands are the best thing we have for that.

That's us, yeah.

- Do we regret, as a state, we've already had, back in 2021, we had scaled back the state protections and the US Supreme Court said that the Clean Water Act doesn't necessarily allow the federal government to do everything it had in the past in terms of enforcement.

Now this bill the governor signed.

Do we regret it as a state?

- Well, we should because, you know, as Nick mentioned, they are our sponges, but here's a major challenge that we're facing.

Indiana used to have a tremendous number of wetlands, particularly in northern part of the state before they were drained for agricultural purposes and for suburbs, basically.

What wetlands do is exactly that.

They slow down extreme precipitation events.

So when we get these flooding events, wetlands are the natural temporary storage house for these.

And they do all the great filtration that you guys have mentioned.

But the challenge here is that climate change is not our friend.

What I think we're doing in the state is thinking about the past, right?

Okay, we have these wetlands, they're gone, so let's forget about it.

But climate change is increasing the number of extreme rainfall events we're seeing.

This isn't climate modeling, this is actually observed measurements.

They've gone up by about 15% over the last 20 years alone.

So we've lost 15% of our natural storage capacity.

So it's no surprise that we're flooding, right?

And we project, our institute projects another 15% increase in these flood events.

So we should be going the other way with wetlands.

- And see, Jon, this is the real frustrating point, is the people in charge of the legislature just ignore the experts.

If you talk to the experts who are involved in wetlands, wetland mitigation, dealing with the regulations that existed before these laws came through, they basically say there's not a basis for what the legislature's doing.

And I'd point out that no one supporting the bill that reduces wetlands protections is willing to come on this program and defend themselves despite your trying.

- You stole my...

I was going to make the point that those who think that there's an attempt to team up on one side or the other, we did extend invitations to.

- People out there have to understand that because of gerrymandering, because the districts have been manipulated by the majority party, it makes most of them immune to general elections.

It's all about the primary.

So if they satisfy their own base of support, they're good.

So what this means is the legislature has a lot less accountability.

So if people get frustrated about: Why are you reducing protections of wetlands, which could bring us so many benefits, reduce flooding and other impacts, and be good for the environment, there's no accountability there because you can't get at people who are in 70% districts.

- Now, in fairness, we should point out, in addition to the fact that we invited folks and they couldn't make it, there was a bipartisan break.

It wasn't necessarily strictly along partisan lines in the Senate.

I think there were eight Republicans, in fact, that sided with all Democrats in that chamber opposing the bill on its way to the governor's office.

So it wasn't entirely.

And in fact, the other wetlands bill, which is the one that deals with the tax breaks, property tax breaks for those who have at least a half acre, I believe, and that are qualified or classified as wetlands, you do get a property tax break.

I mean, is that sort of, that carrot, is that enough to make up for the hammer that's maybe being extended on the other side of the equation?

- I mean, that's the thing with these, you know, big, complex issues, is there are lots of sides to it.

And you know, there is that classic question of: Do you offer the carrot or do you use the stick?

And we'd like to hope that people are gonna do what's best for the environment, but unfortunately, in these hyper-partisan times, even things like environmental issues, issues that affect this planet and this land that we all share have started to become these binaries, right?

Where you can either protect the environment or you can, you know, support the economy and business.

I mean, I tell my students this all the time, it's not a binary, it's a complex issue where you can find room for both, right?

But it takes a lot of collaboration, a lot of working together to kind of find these solutions.

But what it boils down to is, you know, we get one environment, it's up to us what we do with it, right?

And it's something that affects all of us.

Flooding is not a Republican or Democrat issue.

We all deal with flooding and issues of urbanization.

So it's really an issue that has a lot of nuance, and you know, I hope as we go forward, we really look at that nuance and think of some of the complexity that underlies these issues.

- Gabe Fillippeli, you've been watching this.

I think you said you arrived in Indiana in '94, perhaps?

So you've seen a lot of the environmental debate unfold.

Matt Pierce just made a point about lawmakers not necessarily heeding the advice of experts.

We saw, certainly this particular bill was drafted by IDEM, ostensibly, although there are people within IDEM that said they weren't necessarily consulted.

But on many issues, the General Assembly's theme of late has been to say when you have these regulatory agencies that require a certain amount of expertise as IDEM would, they really have put the brakes on a lot of the kind of rule promulgation at the agency level.

Am I reading that correctly?

And is that posing a challenge for those who want to make sure that the environment and natural resources remain front and center in Indiana?

- So, it is, and I think IDEM's very responsive to what the State House is saying because it is a state agency.

But where I see them making great steps forward is that they finally, this last year, embraced the Inflation Reduction Act.

So this the largest legislation ever on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

And they're putting together a climate action plan for the state, which means that we'll now be eligible to get a lot more of this federal funding that's specifically aimed for these climate things.

So IDEM is...

I think they're trying their best.

But when you have a state that now is ranked number 50 in environmental resources.

There's 50 states, last time I checked.

Louisiana used to be always worse than us.

No more.

Kentucky gets substantially more climate funding than Indiana.

You know, we should just at least aspire to be Kentucky.

- Yeah, so the question is: Why is the legislature not addressing these clear environmental problems that confront the state?

And it's because you have these special interests have such a death grip on it.

So for example, in the wetlands space, the Home Builders Association, which plays in elections, they donate to campaigns, they do grassroots things.

They have impact, but they did something better.

So why just be in the hallway when we could have members on the inside?

And so they have very adeptly, over the last decade or so, anytime a legislative seat opens up, they try to recruit a home builder to run for that legislative seat.

And so you have a core of home builders within the legislature who oftentimes introduce this legislation or kind of push it through.

And that's the kind of thing where it's difficult then to penetrate when you're not willing to listen to the experts about what the impact of what you're doing is.

- Certainly the challenge, I guess, of a citizen legislature.

When does this natural interest or occupational interest carry over into something that's less savory I suppose?

What do you think about this notion of the expertise?

Is the general assembly, do you think, heeding the brain power that is out there to deal with these issues?

- You know, I think that's something that's always a concern with these issues is the rate at which you consider these issues.

Obviously, the legislator has a lot on their plate, a lot to look at.

And I think sometimes that chance to listen to expertise just doesn't happen.

You know, it's tough because, you know, obviously I'm not in charge of policy, right?

I'm a geologist, but I understand how, you know, the world works, right?

I have a lot of information to give.

We kind of talked about earlier, legislators talked a little bit about everything, right?

So it's kind this issue of where do you put your time.

Do I wish they listened to us more?

Yes.

Do I wish that they would, you know, listen to some of the citizens who take the time to go to the State House and make their voices heard?

Yes.

You know, you talked about, you know, a citizen government where everyone kind of has the say.

I think, you know, as the citizen of Indiana, I haven't lived here that long, you know, sometimes I feel like my voice doesn't matter.

And I don't know how legislators can make people feel like their voices are heard, but I think in Indiana, I know this has come up in past shows, you know, there is a lot of kind of people being disenfranchised with the process because of things like the expertise issue with, you know, these people taking their time to come to the State House, just not feeling like their voices are heard by their legislators.

- You know, and as we look at some of those voices that have resulted in legislation, I looked at all the environmental bills, sustainable energy bills introduced this session.

Quite a few.

A lot of them never got a hearing.

Now part of that's 'cause it's a short session.

But it wasn't just bills that, for instance, Matt Pierce would agree with.

There were some of those certainly that didn't get the light of day, but there were some on the other side that would've even dispensed with, you know, sort of the regulatory sandbox, where let's, you know, in the name of advancing economic development, anything goes.

You know, there were other bills that didn't see light of day either.

So I don't know how, how you necessarily, you know, say one side is dominant.

But let me pose this question as well.

- Actually, I've gotta disagree, Jon.

If you look at the scope of the last 10 years, say renewable energy, right?

Rooftop solar, this thing called net metering.

All these policies that could- - Agrivoltaics.

I gotta say that word 'cause I didn't know it existed until a few months ago.

Now agrivoltaics.

- Yeah.

And so, we're ranked really low on encouraging renewable energy.

Now, we've had renewable energy developing in the state because we just happen to have some electrical transmission lines going across the northern part of the states.

So the entrepreneurs have to put their stuff near transmission lines.

So just by default, we've had some things happen.

But the people in charge of policy refuse to acknowledge that climate change is a real issue that needs to be dealt with and one way to do that is you accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

Instead, it's a grudging acceptance that it's coming, so maybe we have to do a few things, but most of the legislation has not advanced renewable energy.

Community solar is a classic example.

There are a lot of people saying, look, if you would just create the policy framework, so utilities had to accommodate community solar, then people could come together who can't afford to put solar on their own roofs or they rent or whatever and you could put some solar in a vacant lot someplace.

- This is the difference.

So it's between the individual homeowner and then the utility scale of solar farms.

This is something in the middle.

- It's a way for homeowners to come together, buy a share of this renewable, and that would feed back into the system.

- And that didn't happen.

You're right.

Didn't get a hearing, nor did the one that would create a task force to look specifically at how climate change, you know, is unfolding.

That's another one that didn't.

But by the same token, back to my point, there was also one that would've basically said keep shoveling the coal and put the brakes on the whole five pillars of, you know, renewable.

And we're really doubled down on the notion of having a go-to source under any circumstance, which is coal.

So it does cut both ways.

Just a general question, as a state, when I talk about PFAS legislation, when I talk about, you know, lead pipes and all these things, are we concerned more or should we be more concerned about what we're trying to undo and mitigate?

Or should we more concerned about things we can do to get ahead of the game?

Or are those mutually exclusive?

- Well, I think the legislature can walk and chew gum at the same time, so I think you need to be doing both things.

But I think that really, if you look at what are the biggest public health issues, pollution issues basically, facing the state, we've got a lot of cleanup work to do.

We've gotta get policies in place to like, stop the bleeding, stop the pollution, and then figure out how do you remediate it.

And coal ash is another example, right?

We have been unwilling, as a legislature, to do anything to really get rid of the coal ash.

We're kind of content to let the utilities just kind of cap it off, and, you know, experts have said there's issues about whether that's gonna leach into the water table and end up contaminating drinking water.

And it's just crickets chirping.

- Well, we have a whole community actually built on coal ash here in the state.

Gabe, let me ask you a similar question.

Is our focus in the right place?

And I say "we" as if it's we in the general assembly, but a lot of it is about mopping up, cleaning up, and even arguing about what the problem is as opposed to perhaps capturing opportunity with sustainability that would change the way we live and breathe and work here in Indiana.

- Yeah, and I think a lot of it is exactly that point.

We look to the past, we clean up or we try to clean up our messes.

Lead service lines are a big issue.

They're all over many communities in Indiana.

We don't know where they are necessarily either.

And so welcome legislation for mitigating that and of course taking it to the last step, which is actually the homeowner's property, which often has lead service lines, led components to them.

But when it comes to thinking about the future, the coal ash is a huge issue.

Not only is it currently likely leaking into many waterways, but if you look at climate change, again, extreme flooding, most of these are right on waterways and they're extremely vulnerable to that.

So we have a lot of pollutants near waterways vulnerable to flooding.

We have the waterways themselves are already impaired around the state, impaired largely from sewage, and we haven't taken into account how do we deal with the sewage problem.

- Well, some of our municipal sewer systems are certainly antiquated and every time there's a heavy rain, you see a lot of the sewage.

And then you have the whole septic tank system, which other legislation would've dealt with disclosures about septic tanks.

- Well, that's another classic example.

Over the last 10 years, the legislature has done everything it can to keep people from hooking up to municipal sewer systems, conservancy district sewer systems that would keep the water cleaner, right?

They've created all kinds of loopholes and ways for people to say, "I'm just gonna keep my septic tank."

And you really have no way of knowing if that septic tank is functioning.

And so unless your septic tank fails to the level where you have fecal matter floating in your backyard, who knows what's happening there.

And so the legislature has really undermined the ability to get people onto sewer systems to do a better job of protecting the environment.

- No, and that was another bill that I saw come out of the Senate.

Didn't get a hearing, but it would've created a mechanism by which local governments could have identified and funded or start to fund clean energy and wastewater districts.

So a lot of this though is teeing it up, I guess, for next session.

And with that in mind, forget about everything we just talked about, that did or didn't pass this year.

What's the one thing, from your standpoint, that Indiana can do to better position itself in terms of the environment, in terms of sustainable energy, in terms of the way we enjoy and utilize natural resources, what do we do?

- You know, I think the one thing we need to do is get some clear priorities when it comes to the environment.

Like they've mentioned, it's a many-headed beast.

It's not one issue, it's not coal ash, it's not lead, it's not PFAS.

All of these things are issues that all need to be addressed, right?

The citizens of Indiana deserve to have a safe, healthy environment.

Everyone has a right to that.

And if the state doesn't start looking at these issues and think about: How can we clean up the mess we have and how can we prevent these messes in the future?

We're gonna have some major public health issues for the folks who live in Indiana.

In particular, PFAS, which we haven't got into much, is a whole class of chemicals that we don't even have a good sense of how it impacts the body or what safe levels are, and they are everywhere, right?

The state really needs to look at some of these things for the betterment of our citizens.

All these issues connect.

- Gabe Filippelli, same question.

If I make you czar of energy and environment for the next hour, what are you gonna do?

- Well, first, I would- - I'll give you more than that.

I'll say for a week.

How about that?

- I would like it for a week, yeah.

Or a month.

I would say this challenge of some of the decision makers thinking about their own interests, like you're talking about the builders, right?

If I'm a builder and I want to develop a property, am I going to set aside 20% of it for wetlands or for natural drainage unless I'm forced to?

Probably not.

So what we're seeing is Indiana becoming actually more and more industrialized as we're hitting the post-industrial age, which means that a lot of young people are not going to be all that interested in coming back to Indiana.

When you rank 50th in environmental assets, that's a challenge.

So I think that IDEM is gonna have to continue moving forward and actually accelerating its efforts to confront climate change.

But like you said, Nick, it's not a binary.

Just because you value a safe environment doesn't mean you devalue making money.

You have to have regulations in force that help you balance that.

It's a balancing act.

- And again, it is bipartisan.

Look at the Holcomb administration which has been preaching, over the deaf ears of its own party sometimes, the notion of quality of life issues.

More trails, more state parks, more...

The things that make it attractive in addition to a tax rate.

Of course, the other side is he signed the wetlands bill.

So I guess it cuts two ways.

Last question, I guess, for you.

Coming into a big budget session next year, what do you wanna see happen and are you thinking that you're gonna be more on offense?

And when I say you people who put, you know, sustainability high on their priority list or on defense again?

- Well, the voters have something to say about that as to what the relative strengths of each party are in the legislature.

So the voters will have a say with the elections coming up this year.

But unfortunately, I'm not very optimistic about the future.

I think a lot of these more controversial issues that the majority party would like to push through, they've kind of held a lot of them off until the long session.

And so the question is: Are you gonna be playing defense on more things that shift the balance toward industry which wants less environmental regulation or are they actually gonna begin to address these environmental issues that are facing the state?

And I'm not very optimistic about that unless the voters send a strong signal that they want something different.

- Well, that's a classic "we will see what happens," right?

Thank you very much for taking time to share your knowledge, your insights, and your obvious passion about this issue.

Again, my guests have been Gabe Filippelli of Indiana University, Representative Matt Pierce of Bloomington, and Nick Soltis of the University of Indianapolis.

For better or worse, and reasonable people can debate which it is, the general assembly has made higher education a high priority this session.

We'll study the potential consequences on the next "Indiana Lawmakers."

Time now for my weekly conversation with Commentator Ed Feigenbaum, publisher of the newsletter "Indiana Legislative Insight," part of Hannah News Service.

Ed, we talked about a lot of the big issues.

What did we leave out?

What do we need to know?

- We talked a lot about the policy that did and didn't make it, but I think there's an interesting administrative law issue that's kind of floating around under the surface that will affect environmental law in the future if it does pass, and that's House Bill 1003, and that got a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.

And one thing that that would do is change the way that appeals are handled from administrative agencies.

And that's important because there are a lot of very big environmental issues that get appealed from the agency to the courts or to an administrative law court.

And one thing that 1003 would do would be to change the level of deference that's given to the agency, both in terms of facts and the actual decision and allow the administrative law judge to then make an independent determination of the facts.

So essentially, rehear everything from scratch.

And that's been a problem for some of the agriculture groups, some of the poultry association groups, the dairy people, they're not happy with allowing a second bite of the apple to some of the groups that are challenging permits in particular.

A lot of the other groups, some of the business groups, are very pleased with this legislation.

So in the final week of the legislature, this is going to be shaped, I think, in conference committee and it may have a big impact going forward.

- Of course, that's also an issue at the federal level that the US Supreme Court has been wrestling with it.

Who has the upper hand right now in all these issues?

Is it those who really don't have much appreciation of expertise in the agencies?

Is that the primary mode of thinking right now?

- I think part of the problem is that the legislature doesn't necessarily appreciate the degree of expertise that we have in some of these agencies, whether it's the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, the Department of Environmental Management, State Board of Animal Health, the Department of Building Services, those kinds of agencies.

And what they don't realize is if they don't want the agencies to be making these kinds of determinations, they're going to have to be a lot more specific in the laws that they pass.

- All right, last question.

Anything we need to look for?

Surprises in store?

Give you 10 seconds.

- Watch Senate Bill 256.

It's the new Omnibus and Medicaid reform bill.

- You heard it here first.

Ed, as always, appreciate your insight.

- Thank you, Jon.

- Well, that concludes another edition of "Indiana Lawmakers."

I'm Jon Schwantesm and on behalf of Commentator Ed Feigenbaum, WFYI Public Media, and Indiana's other public broadcasting stations, I thank you for joining us and I invite you to visit WFYI.org for more State House news.

Until next week, take care.

(triumphant music)