A Last Defense Against Disaster: Why Hoosiers Must Protect Our Wetlands (and Oppose Indiana SB 389)
“Dreaming in Green” Youth Climate Report # 1
By SAVANNAH BAUGH, youth climate reporter and founding writer for the new youth-led Sunrise Indy Press series, “Dreaming in Green.” Read more of Savannah’s work here.
In Indiana, wetlands play a crucial role in the health of our environment, our animals, and our people. As the Hoosier Environmental Council reports, they serve as natural sponges, retaining around one million gallons of rainwater per acre reducing flooding; they are also key players in our water purification process, acting as natural filters. Additionally, they are vital to the health of our animals, as these lands make up a significant part of their natural habitat. In Indiana’s current Republican-controlled legislature, which is proving itself to be not only anti-environment but also anti-Hoosier, these sacred lands are in serious danger.
Indiana State Senate Bill 389, which is staunchly opposed by environmental expert groups such as the Hoosier Environmental Council and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, would eliminate many regulations surrounding Indiana’s wetlands and how they can be used. Republicans in our state senate want to deregulate our wetlands and reduce the negligible barriers in place to increase urban development in these areas. The math here is not complicated; these lawmakers are placing their personal interests and potential profits over the health of our environment and the long-term effects of this deregulation on the quality of our water, our soil, wildlife, and our state as a whole.
Protecting and reinforcing our wetlands is an investment into the resiliency of our landscape as well as our state’s ability to survive the increase of climate destabilization. As the unprecedented winter storm that recently devastated Texas and surrounding southern states laid bare so painfully, investing in our state’s environmental resilience in order to better adapt and survive increasing climate destabilization is one investment we cannot afford to forgo. And it’s not just Texas that teaches us this; deregulation in the environmental sector always leads to disaster.
One of the effects of Senate Bill 389 — the one most touted by the bill’s authors, all three of whom have ties to the Indiana Builders Association, as I discuss in more detail below — would be an increased ability for developers to construct buildings in hazardously close proximity to Indiana’s wetlands. Construction near these protected areas will cause them to become polluted, toxic, and uninhabitable to the many already-fragile lifeforms which rely on these wetlands, thus rendering the wetlands useless at doing their jobs of filtering our groundwater and acting as home for thousands of precious species. With short-term profits for the few being so transparently prioritized over the wellbeing of our natural resources, the long-term effects this deregulation will have on our state will be devastating.
In addition to the blatant harm this would cause to our state’s ecosystems, the senators sponsoring this bill all have conflicts of interest involving the development of real estate in areas surrounding our wetlands. The Chair of the Senate Environmental Committee, Senator Mark Messmer, owns a plumbing company with a clear motive of land development in regulated wetland areas; other state senators supporting the bill have businesses in construction and real estate. As business owners with powerful and obvious profit motives, the intimate involvement of Senator Messmer and others in this bill should cause intense concern for any Hoosier who believes that holding public office should be about serving one’s community, not drafting legislation for one’s own financial gain.
There are ample reasons to reject Senate Bill 389 on the grounds that it is profiteering, environment-killing, and undemocratic. But the most compelling reason why I oppose Senate Bill 389 is the utter disregard it shows for Indiana’s Indigenous peoples and the lands they stewarded for thousands of years. Indiana was once home to many Indigenous nations, including the Miami, Wea, Piankashaw, Shawnee, Eel River, Delaware, and Potowatomi; it continues today to be home to members of many of those nations. But in relatively short order it has become, like every other state in our country, a playground for wealthy developers to abuse sacred Native land. For centuries, wetlands have played a religious, cultural, and environmental role for Indiana’s Indigenous population, and this bill further disrespects the people who originally inhabited this land we now call home. We cannot call ourselves environmentalists if we do not support Indigenous populations’ struggles for tribal sovereignty and land back. We cannot fully honor Indigenous struggles if we do not also fight to defend our state’s yet-unexploited lands — the few safe places remaining for native Indiana flora and fauna to survive and thrive. At the end of the day, there can be no ethical development on stolen land.
Due to the ceaseless efforts of environmental activists, there has been a recent amendment improving the original language of the bill, which would put a few more barriers in the way of land developers in order to preserve more farmland and some wetlands. Although any progress is good progress, these measures simply delay the inevitable. The truth is that the removal of any wetland regulations at all is beneficial only to those who stand to make a profit from it, such as the owners or construction companies and the legislators whose campaigns they bankroll. Allowing any further destruction of our land is harmful for all Hoosiers.
Republicans on the Senate Environmental Committee have thus far shown great disregard for the will of the public, not to mention the expertise of the scientists, in attempting to strong arm this bill into law; however, in the words of Frederick Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” If you care about preserving our state’s wetlands, and thus shoring up our state’s resiliency to face the inevitable climate destabilization in the years to come, please contact the Chair of the Senate Environmental Committee, Senator Mark Messmer, in order to voice your thoughts on the matter. If passed, this bill will edge our state several steps closer to total climate catastrophe, leaving us with even fewer options than we have now to fix the damage we have already done to our beautiful state.
Contact your Indiana state representatives today with the following 4 demands (with gratitude to the Hoosier Environmental Council for the language below)…
- Support Representative Errington’s amendment to replace SB 389 with a Wetland Task Force.
- If the Wetland Task Force amendment fails, support the House Environmental Committee version of SB 389. (The committee version, but no further!)
- Oppose Amendment 19 to SB 389 or any other anti-wetlands floor amendments.
- Oppose the Senate version of SB 389.
Talk to a Sunrise Indy organizer about the role you can play in defending our collective future and advocating for a Green New Deal.
