A proposed federal rule to improve air quality could have an outsized impact on Indianapolis westsiders who have been living alongside some of the city’s worst polluters of the last decade.
The new rule, proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency this month, would require states to identify which areas are emitting the most soot air pollution in a year and figure out ways to cut the yearly amount of pollution by 25%.
Soot, also called fine particulate matter, is a mix of liquid droplets and particles that can cause serious harm when inhaled. Soot damages lungs and hearts, worsens existing health conditions and has been linked to an increased chance of developing colorectal and prostate cancers, higher risk of death from COVID-19 for unvaccinated people and lower math and English test scores for children.
In Marion County, most of the facilities that have emitted the largest amount of particulate matter pollution over the past 10 years are located near low-income and minority neighborhoods on the west side of Indianapolis.
Sometimes, the polluters are located just feet away from homes.
“This rule is going to help protect the health of people living in those communities,” said Marvin Brown IV, a senior attorney for legal advocacy group Earthjustice. “Particulate matter doesn’t just affect you in terms of killing you slowly, it also has acute effects when you’re breathing in high amounts of it.”
The rule could help reduce the health risks for thousands of residents living near westside facilities that together have emitted hundreds of tons of soot every year for decades.
A century of environmental injustice
The west side has a long history of exposure to pollution, dating back to around the time migrants from Appalachia and immigrants from Europe settled here in the late 19th century.
Paula Brooks, environmental justice director for the Hoosier Environmental Council, said major changes came after the Great Flood of 1913, which killed more than 100 people and made thousands homeless.
Despite people already living there, local leaders essentially rezoned the southwest side for industrial use, Brooks said. The same happened in Martindale Brightwood and in other neighborhoods filled with Black and immigrant communities.
“The southwest side has always been kind of a dumping ground,” Brooks said. “People adapted, but that meant they were exposed to lots of air pollution.”
The west side also emerged as an ideal location for manufacturing plants because of redlining.
Redlining was a process used by the U.S. government in the 1930s and 1940s to grade neighborhoods based on their financial risk to money lenders. Neighborhoods received lower ratings if they had residents who were Black, immigrants or certain types of white residents.
In 1937, for example, the Home Owners Loan Corp. rated the West Indianapolis neighborhood as “hazardous” to lenders because it was “affected by very low class native whites,” and because 2% of residents were Black and 1% were “foreign-born.”
The rating made it more difficult for many types of businesses to receive federal loans for development, so only investments deemed the most capital-safe were built there.
That includes manufacturing plants.
Targeting problem polluters
Today the west side of Indianapolis is home to some of the city’s worst polluters of the last decade, according to data submitted to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
That includes Ingredion Inc., Allison Transmission, AES Indiana’s Harding Street Station, Vertellus Integrated Pyridines and Rolls Royce.
Some of those facilities could be affected soon after the new rule is implemented 60 days after being published in the Federal Register
After the rule is finalized, facilities that want a new air permit or want to renew one will have to meet the new standard or risk having their permit denied.
But changes at most facilities will take years to implement.
The EPA will take about two years to determine whether an area meets the standard. Areas can be as small as a section of town or stretch across several states.
After that determination is made, the state has a year to create a plan for areas that don’t meet the standard. The plan must include what emissions cuts are planned or what other strategies will be pursued.
The EPA can deny a state’s plan if it believes the plan won’t work.
Once the rule is finalized, IDEM will assess viable measures and the associated cost-effectiveness of emissions reduction options for polluters and then determine an “appropriate course of action” like it has for previous rule updates.
Health-based organizations, like the American Lung Association and the National Medical Association praised the rule, saying it would save lives, while national trade associations, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and the National Mining Association, oppose the rule, saying it will be “unachievable” and will negatively affect economic growth.
Critics of the new rule argued that much of the fine particulate matter detected in recent years came from wildfires, road dust and other sources outside of the control of regulated facilities. IDEM, however, can ask for monitoring data from those types of “exceptional events” to be excluded. It asked for several days worth of exemptions in 2023.
The EPA estimates that by 2032, the new rule would result in about $46 billion in public health net benefits nationally, including thousands less premature deaths, lost work days and hospital visits.
Five westside polluters
According to Indiana Department of Environmental Management data, some of the consistently highest polluters over the last decade are found on the west side.
Here’s what we know about them:
Ingredion, Inc, 1515 Drover St., produces specialty starches used in several applications, such as food, paper, textiles and adhesives.
Starches are created by dipping corn into sulfuric acid before grounding it. The process has made the Ingredion facility a major source of pollution since its construction in 1965.
Over the last decade, Ingredion has reported emitting an average of about 57.8 tons of fine particulate matter a year. The factory has been cited for violating particulate matter standards in every decade since those standards were created in the 1970s, with violations noted in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s.
State and city regulators have attempted to control emissions from Ingredion through several settlements since 2000. The latest was a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department, signed in November 2023, in which the government agreed to settle charges that Ingredion violated the Clean Air Act if the company paid a $1.1 million civil penalty, installed $7 million in new equipment and complied with stricter emissions limits.
Days after the consent decree was announced, the facility reported spilling a quarter ton of dry starch powder on its grounds, a potential violation of the consent decree. Ingredion noted the spill in a report to IDEM, but the agency has not taken any enforcement actions.
AES Indiana Harding Street Station, 3700 S. Harding St., is a natural gas-powered plant that can produce more than 660 megawatts of electricity a year.
The station switched from coal to natural gas generation in 2015, a decision which almost immediately reduced the amount of fine particulate matter it emitted.
Before it stopped burning coal, the station averaged 32.5 tons of fine particulate matter emissions a year. The station now averages about 15 tons per year.
Allison Transmission, 1 Allison Way, builds transmissions for trucks, heavy equipment and military vehicles.
The company signed a deal with the U.S. Army in 2020 to make transmissions for the U.S. Army’s battle tank fleet. That contract, worth $162 million, ran through 2021. It later signed another agreement, worth $51 million, for more tank transmissions. That deal expires in March.
The company reported emitting an average of 10.8 tons of fine particulate matter per year in the last decade, but, in 2021, it reported emitting 21 tons — nearly double its yearly average.
Rolls Royce North American Technologies, 2001 and 2355 S. Tibbs Ave., designs, assembles and tests engines and other propulsion equipment for airplanes, ships and other civilian and military vehicles.
The company’s Indianapolis plant is making 600 engines for the U.S. Air Force’s fleet of B-52 bombers.
The company reported emitting an average of about 8 tons of fine particulate matter per year.
In 2021, Rolls Royce completed a six-year, $600 million renovation of its World War II-era facility at 2001 S. Tibbs Ave. that it said would help it become carbon neutral by 2030 That year, its emissions were down to 5.3 tons per year, well below its average for the decade.
Aurorium, 1500 S. Tibbs Ave., owns the former Vertellus Integrated Pyridines chemical plant that produced chemicals to make pyridine, which is used to make pesticides.
The company was acquired by Pritzker Private Capital in March 2023 which then changed its name to Aurorium. In August 2023, Aurorium announced it was closing the plant and would lay off 159 workers.
The company has removed the plant from its list of active sites. Before it was closed, the company averaged about 17 tons per year of fine particulate matter.
Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @heyEnriqueSaenz
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