FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Lance Gideon, Press Secretary
Lance.Gideon@iga.in.gov
317-234-9221
State Sen. Spencer Deery (R-West Lafayette) made the following statement today in regard to his vote in favor of Senate Bill 4, basin-to-basin water transfers:
STATEHOUSE (Feb. 4, 2025) – "I have long suspected that the first legislation we would pass to expand water protections in our state would not accomplish everything I, or our community, wanted. That is certainly the case with Senate Bill 4.
"However, my committee amendments significantly improved the bill. Under these changes, if an entity attempts to build a pipeline from Tippecanoe County to the LEAP district in Boone County, or any other distant location, the project would need to be studied and evaluated against the public interest. The flow of water would be capped, and the permit could be revoked if its terms were not followed.
"These were meaningful wins, but their impact was initially limited because they only applied to pipelines with a capacity exceeding 30 million gallons a day. I am grateful to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Utilities and my colleagues for hearing my argument that it made no sense to establish a regulatory framework and then apply it only to such large pipelines. The amendment I presented on the floor Monday, which was approved by the Senate, reduced the trigger threshold threefold to 10 million gallons a day, which is the amount I advocated for last year.
"With these changes to the bill, I decided to vote in favor of the legislation on the Senate floor today."
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State Sen. Spencer Deery (R-West Lafayette) represents Senate District 23,
which includes Fountain, Parke, Vermillion and Warren counties,
and portions of Montgomery and Tippecanoe counties.
Click here to download a high-resolution photo.
