By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — A bill aimed at keeping closer tabs on groundwater levels across Indiana, including farms, is enjoying unanimous support in the state legislature.

The Indiana Farm Bureau (IFB) helped spearhead the bill not because of any existing problems with depleted groundwater, but to help with factors like avoiding the type of groundwater dissipation problems out West, said Justin Schneider, senior policy advisor and counsel for IFB out of Indianapolis.

Senate Bill 473, authored by state Sen. Ed Charbonneau (R-Valparaiso), allows property owners such as farmers to volunteer in monitoring the levels in their irrigation wells and forwarding the information to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Currently, some property owners already monitor on their own, but without a formal program in place many simply keep the information for their own records and don’t submit the data to an outside agency – leaving a shortage of public information about groundwater levels throughout the state.

“This seeks to go further and maintain that data,” said Sam Hyre, legislative director for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

The bill, approved by a 50-0 vote in the full Senate and by 10-0 vote in House committee March 10, calls for the DNR to set up a structure for volunteers to regularly check and record water levels in their private wells, and transmit the findings that will be posted on the USGS website. Some of that data could also be sent to the Indiana DNR, which anticipates having a role to play in processing and recording the statistics.

Having more thorough information on groundwater levels statewide will aid farmers wanting to put in new irrigation wells, along with helping contractors and homeowners avoid choosing areas where tapping into an adequate supply might be risky.

“This is an effort to try and get more information so people can rely on it to tell whether or not they have water where they’re at,” said Schneider.

The program could also help solve problems that might arise, even before they occur, by looking at recorded levels in the monitoring wells at their highest and lowest – which could help identify trends causing major fluctuations that are often seasonal, Hyre said.

Schneider said the bill is not in response to any major problems with the groundwater supply in Indiana, although there have been some isolated cases where it’s been an issue. But having more data on hand will allow for a more accurate and quicker way of discovering major problems before they can advance to crisis proportions.

Aside from the usual seasonal fluctuations, “As far as we know from the data that we have, we’re not seeing a lowering of the historic levels,” said Schneider.

Since the late 1980s, he said the number of people monitoring private wells in the state has fallen from about 100 to just over 30, so the hope is to rebuild that network by having a structured voluntary monitoring system like the one contained in the legislation.

Volunteers would be trained on operating equipment they would be given to use in monitoring their private wells and distributing the readings and, in most cases, there should be no cost to the participants. Any cost would be for people who currently don’t monitor and might need some extra supplies or equipment to get started, said Hyre. The hope, though, is to have volunteers spread equally throughout the state.

A system of volunteers is desired because it would be costly to hire enough employees to go out and perform regular monitoring across the state. If the bill clears the House and is signed by the governor, the process for recruiting volunteers will likely begin soon after July 1, by mailing requests to people who have voluntarily kept track of their own private wells, said Hyre.

“The only way to get data is to go collect data.”