Mounds Lake Reservoir plan sees competing environmentalist-backed Mounds Greenway plan

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;07;22 Stephanie Wiechmann Rob Sparks stands in front of a large map of the proposed Mounds Lake Reservoir that would snake its way through Anderson, Chesterfield, Yorktown and Daleville. 00;00;07;27 - 00;00;24;18 Rob Sparks We're in phase two feasibility right now, and this is part of the phase two is to engage the public and have kind of a forum experience for them to come through and kind of look at the data that we've gathered at this point, look at the possibilities, understand the impacts. Certainly when you flood 2100 acres, there's a lot of impact. 00;00;24;19 - 00;00;31;12 Rob Sparks We don't want to minimize that. We want people to come through kind of experience that and talk about what they see in some of the. 00;00;31;14 - 00;00;57;05 Stephanie Wiechmann Large, colorful, back lit presentation boards fill a vacant storefront at Mounds Mall. Among the information: Mounds Lake Reservoir will cost about $ 400 million to build, funded possibly by federal dollars, state dollars, and water utility monies. In case of a drought, it should produce 60 million gallons of water a day. Damming the White River will create a 2100 acre lake that will be 50ft deep and Anderson, and at its lowest point, nine feet deep in Daleville. 00;00;57;08 - 00;00;59;17 Stephanie Wiechmann The project would displace homes and businesses. 00;00;59;21 - 00;01;07;03 Rob Sparks To mobile units or modular homes, we're running around 260. We've got about 80 homes and about 80 businesses. 00;01;07;05 - 00;01;30;06 Stephanie Wiechmann Mounds Mall, the site of this week's presentations, will be one of the parcels flooded. If the reservoir is built, so will low lying portions of Mound State Park and the Camp Chesterfield Spiritualist Park, both listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A small sign shows the immediate economic impact of flooding 2100 acres, the loss of tax revenue to Delaware and Madison counties from the loss of assessable homes and businesses. 00;01;30;09 - 00;01;41;02 Stephanie Wiechmann Delaware County will lose about $ 364,000 in taxable property. Madison County will lose almost $ 1.6 million. Spark says that loss will eventually be made up. 00;01;41;07 - 00;02;02;26 Rob Sparks Well, in the short term, the project would have to factor that into budgets to absorb that into, in lieu of tax collection type payments. Utilities do that all the time. I think in the long term we would, probably the commission would establish a benchmark as assessments increase, particularly in Anderson. A lot of the property is going to move to another location. 00;02;02;26 - 00;02;10;21 Rob Sparks And once that assessment starts to increase, to compensate for that loss, then, those payments would be, reduced or eliminated. 00;02;10;24 - 00;02;35;26 Stephanie Wiechmann The Mounds Lake Reservoir is being advertised as a boon to economic development, water conservation and environmental tourism. But earlier this year, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said in a report it was concerned that two feasibility studies about Mounds Lake didn't look at any alternatives to actually building the reservoir. On the banks of the White River in Daleville, environmental groups gather at a canoe rental business. 00;02;35;28 - 00;02;38;07 Stephanie Wiechmann They say they have that alternate plan. 00;02;38;09 - 00;03;03;21 Tim Maloney This is a conservation, land conservation and economic development project that would protect lands along the White River, and would protect the existing forest lands and wetland habitats along the river. There would be a multi-use trail running from both Anderson to Muncie, and would connect up with the trails and park systems in both cities. 00;03;03;23 - 00;03;18;16 Stephanie Wiechmann That's Tim Maloney with the Hoosier Environmental Council. The council is calling its plan the Mounds Greenway White River Conservation Area. Sheryl Myers of the heart of the River coalition says the most important part of the Mounds Greenway plan is to protect the free flowing river. 00;03;18;18 - 00;03;34;20 Sheryl Myers In the long run, a free flowing river is going to be a much more value added asset to our community than creating yet another reservoir, with all the problems that attend man-made impounded water lakes. 00;03;34;22 - 00;03;40;29 Stephanie Wiechmann Maloney says the council's plan would cost one tenth of the reservoir's proposed cost, or about $ 40 million. 00;03;41;01 - 00;04;05;27 Tim Maloney We would anticipate taking advantage of the variety of state and local federal conservation programs that are out there now, starting with the Indiana's Bicentennial Nature Trust, which, funds projects, similar to this, although not at this scale all over Indiana. 00;04;05;29 - 00;04;25;18 Stephanie Wiechmann Organizers of the Mounds Lake project say that the next step for them is to create a commission with all the communities involved and find funding for a required phase three study. They've set a date of 2021 to build the dam and create the reservoir. Maloney says the Mounds Greenway project would take about a decade to acquire all the trail land and carve out the trails. 00;04;25;20 - 00;04;27;19 Stephanie Wiechmann Stephanie Wiechmann, IPR news.