Keep IDEM boards
Improving efficiency and eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy are nearly always desirable objectives – except when efficient actually means ineffectual and impotent.
State legislators need to ask about legislation that would consolidate several state environmental oversight boards into a single environmental rule-making board, especially considering the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s dubious track record for oversight [...]

When an experienced activist attorney says she’d be inclined to advise low-income citizens not to take grievances to court if a certain bill became law, alarms ought to be ringing.
Kim Ferraro’s focus of concern is Indiana House Bill 1091, under which agricultural operations, such as large confined livestock complexes, would be guaranteed payment of their [...]

Tar Sands & the Keystone Pipeline: There are Safer, Cleaner and More Prosperous Alternatives
A reprint of an HEC OpEd, originally published in the Indianapolis Star
Which of the following goals would you want America to reach?
a. More jobs
b. Reduced oil from terrorist-sponsoring nations
c. Energy prices that don’t harm working families
d. Protection of our air, land, and water
I’d bet you’d want [...]

Hoosier Environmental Council is asking for nominations for our 2011 annual awards recognizing individuals, organizations and businesses for their commitment to improving the environment in Indiana. Awardees will be recognized at our 4th Annual Greening the Statehouse Policy Forum on December 10.
We are seeking nominees throughout the state in the following categories:
Organization of the Year: [...]

Indianapolis Star- Editorial
One could say an important Bloomington group has offered our avowedly budget-conscious state government a chance to save $400 million.
That’s not exactly how the Daniels administration looks at the Bloomington/Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization’s decision not to include the extension of I-69 in its local plan.
The proposed 27-mile [...]

Hoosier Environmental Council, Blackford County Concerned Citizens to Hold Public Health Workshop
HARTFORD CITY – MAY 10, 2011 – Citizens from Blackford County will meet on May 21st in the county seat of Hartford City, located 75 miles northeast of Indianapolis, to attend a first-ever Public Health Workshop focused on high levels of cancer in the [...]

Indianapolis Business Journal
February 10, 2011
Even with work on the Interstate 69 extension proceeding in earnest downstate, environmental and citizens groups are suing to stop construction of the 142-mile link between Evansville and Indianapolis.
The complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court by Hoosier Environmental Council and Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads seeks to overturn [...]

For more than two decades, HEC and others have been warning about the excessively high costs – both financial and environmental – of New Terrain I-69. Now that some construction is underway, INDOT and the highway supporters have been forced to admit the growing devastation left in the wake of this $3.2 billion project. [...]

The Journal Gazette
Slashing funding for smog enforcement would be a short-term solution that creates longer-term problems.
January 1, 2011
IDEM budget cuts tempting but short-sighted
By Jesse Kharbanda
Indiana’s 2011 legislature – with two dozen newcomers among them – will be understandably focused on creating the right conditions for jobs for Hoosiers, given the backdrop of both a tough [...]

The breathtaking progress that has marked America’s history has been stunningly lacking in America’s approach to energy. Who would have thought that our nation, which led the Allies to victory in the 1940s, and sent a man to the moon in the 1960s, would allow itself in the 2010s to be more dependent on foreign [...]