The contentious and expensive plan to supply water to Boone County’s resource-deficient LEAP district caught the attention of some state legislators during the Indiana General Assembly this year.
Their main concern? Lebanon, where the tech-park resides, has little in the way of water resources to offer the corporate giants, like a Meta data center and Eli Lilly foundry, planning to move to the area.
So the state wants to ship water in from the Central Indiana watershed instead. Lebanon Utilities is currently finalizing permits to treat and release the wastewater the tech district produces back into the Eagle Creek Reservoir.
The plan isn’t very popular among Eagle Creek enthusiasts, who are searching for ways to stymie the project they fear could threaten the park’s ecosystem. Contacting elected officials ranks high on many of those advocates’ to-do lists.
Here’s how state legislators tried and in many cases, failed, to advance legislation that could have addressed the massive infrastructure project.
SB 6: A push for better communication
Much of the outcry surrounding the LEAP water supply program began in earnest during the fall of 2025 when roughly 475 land owners discovered that Citizens Energy Group, the local Indianapolis water utility, needed to purchase easements on their land to install water mains.
A few months later, three lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 6, which says utilities must follow certain steps to tell residents about their plans.
The legislation, authored by Sen. Rick Niemeyer, R-Lowell, Sen. Dan Dernulc, R-Highland, and Sen. Daryl Schmitt, R-Jasper, requires municipally owned utilities to notify landowners 60 days in advance if they plan to acquire or condemn land for the extension of water or wastewater mains outside their typical jurisdiction.
Citizens sent out letters to land owners six months in advance, Bridget O’Connor, director of government affairs and regulatory policy for citizens, said at a Feb. hearing on the bill. But she added the utility now recognizes that the jargon and legalese used in the letters was not “received well” by recipients.
“So, we’ve softened our approach,” she said.
Gov. Braun signed the bill on Mar. 4, 2026, but it doesn’t do much to ensure that a utility’s communication is simple and digestible for a lay reader.
And Citizens, plus other utilities “owned, operated, or held in trust by a consolidated city,” managed to escape culpability under the legislation through an exemption.
That doesn’t sit well with Rep. Cherrish Pryor, D-Indianapolis, whose district abuts a part of Eagle Creek Park.
“I wanted Citizens to be a part of it,” Pryor said in an interview with IndyStar. “Hopefully, [Citizens] learned their lesson about how to better notify people when they are coming in doing these major projects.”
HB 1379: Restrictions on water withdrawals
Rep. Chris Campbell, D-West Lafayette, described her House Bill 1379 as a direct response to the state’s plans to supply water to Boone County’s tech park.
The bill would have established a ground water and aquifer preservation task force and would have prohibited most major ground water withdrawals until the summer of 2028.
“It appears that water is definitely going to be an enormous issue, not just with the LEAP project but with data centers,” Campbell said. “We definitely need to start working on things that start to regulate our water usage in the state.”
The bill died without receiving a hearing from the House Committee on Natural Resources.
Amendments galore
Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, introduced and reintroduced so many amendments prohibiting utilities from withdrawing water from Eagle Creek Reservoir to service the LEAP district or data centers that he said he lost track of them all.
“I’m really concerned about the LEAP project, and I have been concerned for at least four years,” Qaddoura said in an interview.
Not only is Qaddoura worried about the water supply program’s impact on Eagle Creek, he’s also frustrated with the lack of transparency from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), the state agency guiding the LEAP water project. Qaddoura’s Eagle Creek-related amendments, one of which was filed onto Senate Bill 6 and another two on House Bill 1002, all failed.
Qaddoura also introduced House Bill 83, which he said was also related to the LEAP district, albeit indirectly. The legislation, which failed, would have repealed certain sales tax exemptions for data centers that the General Assembly codified last year.
“If you’re incentivizing them to exist for 50 years, they will be consuming water in Indiana for 50 years,” he said.
The IEDC also concerned Rep. Edward DeLaney, D-Indianapolis. During a floor session on Jan. 29, DeLaney argued unsuccessfully for an amendment to House Bill 1003 that would have created a commission to scrutinize the agency’s dealings.
“This is an organization that has spent billions of our taxpayer’s dollars under a cloak of secrecy that managed to find the only dry place in Indiana to put a water demanding series of facilities,” said DeLaney. “I mean, how they found Boone County, I don’t know, but they did. So they’re inept.”
Session is over. Now what?
Pryor said she still hopes to see some elected officials address the LEAP water supply program. It just won’t be her and her statehouse colleagues.
“Since we’re not in session right now, we’re out legislatively,” she said. “I do, however, think that the city and the mayor have the opportunity to have more input.”
City-County Councilor Dan Boots told IndyStar last month after a committee hearing that the council doesn’t have “final authority” over whether or not the project moves forward.
But there might be at least one way that Indianapolis can have a say in the proceedings: The city contract with Citizens Energy Group dictating how much water the utility can withdraw from the reservoir expires this summer after 50 years.
Advocates of Eagle Creek are waiting to see if the renegotiation will shore up protections for the park.
This article was written by IndyStar reporter Sophie Hartley.