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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana Finance Authority approved $325 million in loans Thursday afternoon to support the proposed extension of the Citizens Energy system to provide 25 million gallons of water per day to the LEAP Lebanon Innovation District and surrounding Boone County developments.
Citizens Energy Group was approved to receive $200 million in loans and Lebanon Utilities approved for $125 million in loans from the State Revolving Fund to support their involvement in the project. Additional financing could also be possible in the future.
Both Citizens and Lebanon will still need to be approved for State Revolving Fund loans through an application process. Both will need to satisfy requirements and receive project approval letters before the loans can close, according to IFA officials.
Citizens has submitted a draft application, spokeswoman Laura O’Brien said, but an updated version with cost information will be sent over next week.
James McGoff, IFA chief operating officer and director of environmental programs, said during the Thursday meeting that he expects the loans to close before the end of the year. The agency is actively working with both parties to finalize the loans, he said.
The project has been estimated to cost about $450 million, but the price could rise depending on Lebanon’s connection requirements and if more detailed engineering work is required, according to a report given Aug. 21. at a Citizens board meeting.
O’Brien told IBJ that a bond issuance would not surpass $700 million to fund the project’s infrastructure. The Citizens board approved a resolution authorizing the loan ceiling “for a high priority project.”
The State Revolving Fund loan program provides low-interest loans to improve wastewater and drinking water infrastructure.
Ratepayer dollars are not expected to fund the project, according to previous statements by Lebanon Mayor Matt Gentry and Citizens.
The potential project would serve as a water source to support the LEAP district, a major effort by the IEDC to draw giant tech manufacturing facilities to the state (LEAP stands for Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace).
The project is expected to serve the water needs of the park for the next 15 to 20 years, but the development will ultimately need additional water supplies to reach its projected size. The proposed infrastructure extension would supply the Eli Lilly and Co. manufacturing complex expansion, additional park tenants and new development in the city.
It would involve Citizens Energy expanding its current system and constructing water mains, booster stations, tanks, and treatment plant upgrades.
The project is separate and apart from a possible Wabash pipeline project and is not included in the finance authority’s ongoing 28-county Wabash headwaters study. That project would pump water through a 35-mile pipeline to the LEAP district from Wabash River aquifers near Lafayette.
The Citizens project would allow the area’s development projects to continue moving forward. Most projects generally have been stalled since June when Gentry announced the city doesn’t have the capacity to support more commercial or housing development until a water solution is found.
In August, the IFA took the first step toward providing loan financing for the option. Less than a week later, the State Budget Committee approved $50 million for the IFA to secure bonds specifically for the new project.
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I’m still absolutely floored that “Good for Business” Indiana suddenly finds it controversial to support modern manufacturing.
What’s the real story here?
Location, location, location.
What’s controversial is putting the massive development in an area lacking the water resources and water Infrastructure to support it.
“Location, location, location” is IEDC hype. The only thing unique about Lebanon is that the mayor’s daddy is the guy who (as he proclaims) turned Indiana into a one-party state. What’s controversial, or should be, is forcing every Hoosier to pay for Lebanon’s prosperity, first of all, and simply because of political favoritism, secondly.
I am a Boone County resident watching this fiasco called LEAP unfold.
Does anyone other than me see this water project as absolute insanity? Phrases like “the price could rise”…”development will ultimately need additional water supplies” make me believe that no one has a clue or a solid plan here. Taking water from Westfield and Whitestown. How was that decision made? Must be because they are not growing and don’t need it? And yet the endless supply of money flows.
Makes me think that they should change the “E” in LEAP from “Exploration” to “Exploitation”.
And the former airport here in Indianapolis sits waiting for something to happen…..
All this money but none of it’s going to environmental science, research, or impact studies for the resource. Mind blowing.
Obviously this leap project was based on the location between Indy and Purdue. A basic developer driven mentality. All would have been smooth sailing for a single site specific project. Unfortunately, the developer minds failed to provide a serious engineering due diligence of resource and infrastructure requirements at this location for such a massive development.
This part of the state has some of the best, richest, and deepest agricultural topsoil in the state, but no real water sources. Should have been an early red flag to raise the anchor and move to another location. With Lilly already on board with promises from the State and IEDC, it appeared too late and too politically embarrassing to admit the location was maybe not going to work, all because of a single resource, water! The political and developer egos, couldn’t handle that choice, so now they all scrounge and search for the sacred water. The current Citizens proposal and investments will surely satisfy the Lilly development, but probably not the remaining +-9000 acres.
It’s also probably time for Purdue and private companies to utilize the massive 9000 acres of farmland for crop and animal research that would not require the projected 100 million gallons of water per day, per day, per day!
“Obviously this leap project was based on the location between Indy and Purdue.” That’s obviously what the IEDC, and the Purdue prez who previously worked for Mitch Daniels, and Mayor Gentry, etc etc CLAIM. As if there’s something magical about being between hither and yon. What’s obvious is that, due to the crippling water shortage that Matt Gentry admits has been known about for decades (he was on a legislature water study committee some years ago btw), the very concept of “LEAP Lebanon” MAKES NO SENSE. There are two classes of onlookers here: 1. People who buy all or some of the hype, & 2. People who are bewildered by all or some of this debacle. In the latter case, the water fiasco in particular. “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” they ask. One simply can use Occam’s Razor to whittle this puzzle down to something that every Hoosier is familiar with: IT’S A GOOD OL’ BOY DEAL. The answer is two words: Mike Gentry. He’s the mayor’s daddy, who runs the GOP consulting firm Mark It Red, which proclaims on its website that “[Mike] Gentry was the architect of the effort by Republicans to take back the Indiana Statehouse after years of Democrat rule.” Mitch Daniels and Eric Holcomb and pretty much all of the rest of them are beholden to him, and that’s why they’re mostly (with some exceptions in the Lafayette area) okay with spending, oh, a billion $ or whatever it takes to turn Lebanon into “Carmel with an industrial megasite” as a gift to Baby Mayor Gentry. Brad Chambers helped because of his family connections there. See my blog “Brad Chambers, LEAP, and smells like Mitch Daniels.”
A location just south of Lafayette, still within the Wabash watershed and aquifer system, would have made more sense.
On the other hand, states have been engineering and moving water long distances for a hundred years or more (see NYC, LA, Kansas, Nebraska) plus Chicago making the Chicago River flow backwards away from Lake Michigan to protect their drinking water source. Indiana “drained the swamps” along the Calumet and Kankakee Rivers in NWI for farming and industry. Large scale water engineering is nothing new.
This is just wrong. Leave the water where it is.
And this is also why our property taxes will not get fixed … gotta pay for Holcombs Hocus pocus
“Politics” is such a grift. Taxes and government spending is on the way to ruin our our country. People making the rules are setting up their own financial futures.
They have no conscience nor regard for others.