"State's environmental record should be an issue in governor's race, but it's not," is today's lead editorial in the Sunday Indianapolis Star. This piece is the 4th of five the Star has planned on "issues crucial to this year's race for governor of Indiana." Some quotes:
It's not that environmental concerns don't exist:Posted by Marcia Oddi at June 27, 2004 12:23 PM• Indiana ranked sixth in the nation on the Environmental Protection Agency's recent Toxics Release Inventory based on the tonnage of pollutants released to the air, water and ground.
• Rivers, streams and lakes -- posted with fish advisories -- are mostly unswimmable.
• Twenty-four counties with two-thirds of the state's population have been designated non-attainment areas for violating health-based ozone standards, jeopardizing economic growth.
• Farmland is disappearing at a rate of about 100,000 acres a year, while urban sprawl exacerbates congestion in areas with inadequate land-use or public transportation policies.
• The state faces a dangerous buildup of mercury from coal-fired power plants and other toxic pollutants.
• Weak regulations protect only some of the remaining 15 percent of the state's original wetlands that filter and replenish Hoosier groundwater.
• Indiana lags behind other Midwestern states in land set aside for parks and wildlife preserves, while less than $2 million a year from environmental license plate sales is available for new land purchases. * * *
But for now, both major candidates appear focused on economic development and little else. Neither seems eager to address the environment, although environmental policies and economic development increasingly are linked. * * *
An Institute for Southern Studies report correlating environmental policies and economic development ranked Indiana 48th out of 50 states overall. It found a strong connection between states doing well economically and those that had quality environmental programs. Indiana, ranked 44th in environmental spending, didn't fare well in either category.
Citing looming problems attracting new businesses to counties designated non-attainment for ozone or soot, as well as soaring water rates in communities such as Martinsville or Pines due to polluted groundwater, [Tim Maloney, executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council] said, "The old argument that we need to set environmental protections aside to make economic progress is simply false. We have plenty of proof." * * *
There are plenty of issues relating to the environment worth debating: land use policies, energy production, fuel-cell technology, wetland and aquifer protection, septic systems, ozone, small-particle soot, brownfield cleanup, recycling, regulatory policymaking and mercury -- to name a few.
In a manufacturing and agricultural state containing huge but sulfuric coal reserves along with wondrous natural assets -- from fertile land to bountiful hardwood forests, from limestone caverns to the vast Great Lakes -- admittedly there are no easy answers. But the voters at least deserve dialogue and debate about environmental issues that affect their health, livelihoods and quality of life.