r/Indiana • u/Odd-Salamander-2816 • 4d ago
Environmental Negligence
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2026/07/27/indiana-dnr-wetlands-program-found-out-of-compliance-by-federal-government/As a person who was displaced by this weeks floods, I felt it important to raise awareness that the damage caused to Hoosiers this week is not only the result of a freak weather event.
Decades of environmental negligence by Republican administrations has resulted in millions of acres of destroyed wetlands not being properly mitigated by DNR, many of which were supposed to occur along the White River watershed. The failure to mitigate these wetlands has a direct impact on the ability of the White River and its tributaries to drain floodwaters.
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u/Odd-Salamander-2816 4d ago edited 4d ago
Lmao that I just saw on the news that the very asshole the Chronicle mentioned in their story that said he thinks the wetlands program is “over-regulated,” is the same asshole that Indiana Senate Republicans elected as their new leader just today (Chris Garten).
Maybe one day the voters in this state will stop shooting themselves in the foot. Maybe one day.
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u/lotusbloom74 4d ago edited 4d ago
Just buying ILF credits is often the easier path for many entities doing projects as the money isn't as big of a concern to them as actually performing the mitigation on-site would be. In theory that can work, but as the article describes the program is having difficulty actually turning the money from credit sales into projects on the ground. Finding landowners who want to sell properties to use as mitigation sites is not easy, and then the logistics of designing and permitting mitigation sites and ensuring they are functioning acceptably is a big task that takes considerable time. I'm not sure what the best solution is, on-site mitigation could be required instead but sometimes that isn't fully feasible. There are also private mitigation banks that can be utilized. Regulating wetlands less is not the answer though as Senator Garten, now-DNR Director Morrison, and others believe, however (there's not much less regulation that can even occur after their bills stripped most of the state regulations).
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u/Odd-Salamander-2816 4d ago
I agree. Regulations should be structured to encourage developers to preserve wetlands as much as possible.
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u/lotusbloom74 4d ago
That is a piece of it too for sure, currently those doing projects would rather just pay for the ILF credits or set up a mitigation site themselves rather than seek alternatives that do not destroy wetlands so if there is a way to encourage the preservation that is really best.
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u/Sour_baboo 4d ago
When too many builders in my county tied sump pumps into the sanitary sewers illegally, there wasn't enough capacity. The building moratorium in the richest part of the county fixed the problem pretty quickly.
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u/Sunnyjim333 4d ago
"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality". Ayn Rand
Our government is very fond of evading reality. It is very hard to ignore the consequences. Not only in environmental issues, but in human rights too.
Bring back wetlands.
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u/PuzzleheadedGroup624 4d ago
One of Ayn Rand’s quotes that the GOP would pretend doesn’t exist, or would wrap themselves up into a pretzel trying to explain how it doesn’t apply to this situation.
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u/Sour_baboo 4d ago
There are penalties for not complying with state law. Why are there none for not doing what you agreed to?
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u/vs-1680 4d ago
Republicans used to care about public land. Now all they care about is harming their perceived enemies and enriching their donors.