Power company to take water from Lake Monroe

A deal between Indianapolis Power & Light and the Indiana Natural Resources Commission will draw 325.9 million gallons of water annually from Lake Monroe.
But this shouldn’t raise alarm, officials said.

“This individual item is not particularly important in itself,” said David Cable, operations manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who is in charge of Lake Monroe’s water level. “It’s when you have 15 or 20 or 100 of these agreements that the cumulative effect would have an impact. That’s when we’d have to start looking at what to do to maintain our pool.”

Indianapolis Power & Light plans to use the water only in case of a severe drought that would dry up the east fork of the White River in southern Indiana.

The company has a large coal-fired plant in Petersburg, Ind., that uses river water for cooling purposes. Lake Monroe’s released water would follow the watershed to meet up with the river.

The contract is worth $215,000 throughout the life of the agreement payable to the state, whether or not Indianapolis Power & Light actually uses the water.

The 20-year deal has been sent to Gov. Mitch Daniels’ office, and he is expected to sign it in the coming weeks.

Cable said it would take roughly 10 days of use to reach the contract’s maximum annual allotment of 325.9 million gallons if the river’s water levels got low enough.
If that were to happen, he estimated the lake level would drop about half a foot. The company can only request between 20 to 30 million extra gallons a day to be sent through the lake’s south-end spillway.

Monique Riggs, an environmental scientist with the Indiana Division of Water, said there are other agreements in place to draw water from Lake Monroe.
Indianapolis Power & Light’s agreement is the only one that won’t pull water every day from the reservoir.

“It is unique in that it’s a reservation for use in a particular situation,” Riggs said.
The contract also has stipulations allowing the state to withdraw from the agreement at any time, and Indianapolis Power & Light must implement drug-free workplace policies.

Bloomington’s water utility, which also draws from Lake Monroe, comes primarily from the reservoir at its Monroe Water Treatment Plant to serve roughly 20,500 customers.
The utility averages a daily flow of 13 million gallons and has a capacity of 24 million gallons for peak demand, according to its Web site.

A 1994 Indiana Water Shortage Plan, developed by the Department of Natural Resources, details the steps that would be taken in the event of a water shortage and includes plans to reduce the water use of any industrial utility. This would override the Indianapolis Power & Light agreement because the primary focus would be drinking water, not power generation.

“It’s certainly much easier to ship electricity over transmission lines than to try to ship water,” Cable said.

Still, the Monroe County Planning Commission issued a statement in May that voiced concern for the agreement.

“Given the fact that Monroe County residents have in the past consumed nearly 23 million gallons per day, we do not want our ability to maintain sufficient water capacities for drinking and other local uses jeopardized as a result of additional draw-down with volumes equaling our residents’ daily consumption needs,” commission president Jerry Pittsford said in a letter addressed to the Division of Water.

The commission oversees development and land use in the county but doesn’t control Lake Monroe.

Indianapolis Power & Light did not respond to requests for an interview on the matter.
The company and the state had a previous agreement for water from Lake Monroe from 1980 to 2005, and water was released from the reservoir for the company’s purpose just once, in 1999.

The pool level dropped just one-tenth of a foot during that release, Cable said.