Mid-States Corridor proposal has residents cautious, leaders excited

In Mayor Noel Harty’s decade of attending public conferences within the Southern Indiana metropolis of Loogootee, inhabitants 2,600, hardly anybody has ever proven up.

But in early 2020, a dialogue of one highway project left standing room only in the Loogootee High School auditorium, which seats 600.

“And that was before the route was chosen,” he stated.

The type of venture they got here out in droves to listen to about is equally uncommon.

The Mid-States Corridor is a proposed 50-mile highway roughly following U.S. 231 with value estimates close to $1 billion, constructed for the specific function of boosting financial exercise in Southern Indiana. The solely different comparable endeavor within the space in latest residing reminiscence is the I-69 venture.

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It’s additionally uncommon as a result of, if authorised, it might be the primary time Indiana has used a brand new technique of funding main highways, created by a 2017 legislation. 

That law authorizes a Regional Development Authority — a public entity spanning a number of cities or counties whose appointed board helps plan and fund financial improvement tasks — to straight leverage federal funding for regional transportation infrastructure tasks, such because the Mid-States Corridor, which impacts a 12-county area.

To get this course of rolling, the RDA behind the Mid-States — relatively than state companies like INDOT, which generally initiates tasks of this scale — raised cash to pay for a thick federally required environmental examine, which published this spring.

Local entities generally search federal grants to fund tasks. This laws grants the ability to a collaboration of entities — the a number of native governments that shaped the RDA, whose funding could come from a mixture of private and non-private {dollars} — to hunt federal cash and associate with the state on regional freeway tasks, due to this fact increasing the RDA’s capacity to finance large-scale tasks and leverage personal {dollars}.

To business leaders in Southern Indiana, the freeway is an important technique of decreasing journey time to enterprise facilities and presenting a lifeline to a area that is dropping inhabitants and desires higher connectivity for jobs. To critics, it is an instance of enterprise leaders pitching their {dollars} towards an enormous venture that advantages them, on the expense of greater than 1,000 acres of farmland, karst and cave areas and as much as 100 properties.

At a Huntingburg metropolis council assembly in February, Mark Schroeder, chair of the Mid-States Corridor RDA, advised councilors he believes this partnership might be a mannequin for future infrastructure tasks.

Watching on YouTube, Mark Nowotarski, energetic within the Coalition Against the Mid-States Corridor, thought to himself, “What will be next?”

Origins of the Mid-States Corridor

The U.S. 231 hall has been studied on and off because the Nineteen Nineties.

In 1993, the Indiana Department of Transportation commissioned a examine to establish methods to enhance site visitors service and capability on the highway inside Dubois County, within the areas of Jasper and Huntingburg. The examine got here up with some bypass concepts, however none got here to fruition.

In 2004, INDOT authorised a draft Environmental Impact Statement — a federally required doc investigating a venture’s prices and impacts to land and assets — for a similar 20-mile span of U.S. 231.

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Doing nothing on this highway would have fewer environmental impacts, the 2004 examine famous, however wouldn’t be according to “the intended function of U.S. 231 as a regional mobility corridor and a commerce corridor.”

A remaining Environmental Impact Statement was by no means authorised or printed. In early 2010, INDOT and the Federal Highway Administration determined to replace the 2004 information in a brand new assertion printed in 2011.

In 2014, the federal authorities withdrew each the 2004 and 2011 research, saying the venture is “no longer warranted” after reevaluating the site visitors info, based on the Federal Register discover.

But the trouble to construct a brand new freeway solely expanded.

The I-67 Development Corporation, a coalition of enterprise leaders and elected officers, commissioned a feasibility examine in 2012 of an interstate venture that might join Nashville to western Michigan, with one part spanning what’s roughly now the proposed 50-mile Mid-States: beginning at I-64, bypassing Huntingburg and Jasper to the east, and tying into I-69.

Cambridge Systematics, the creator, interviewed industrial leaders to find out their transportation connection wants to enhance freight motion within the area, arguing that an environment friendly community is crucial to retaining Indiana aggressive. The examine particularly referred to as out the advantages for corporations like Jasper Engines and furnishings producers within the space.

In 2014, the I-67 company renamed that southern Indiana portion the Mid-States Corridor. Several company members — together with Hank Menke, CEO of Jasper-based furnishings producer OFS Brands, and then-Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann — additionally participated in former Gov. Mike Pence’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Transportation Infrastructure, which named the Mid-States Corridor a second-tier precedence for the state.

But tasks do not truly get constructed with out the say-so of the state and federal transportation companies.

Sen. Mark Messmer, R-Jasper, who’s vice chairman of Jasper-based plumbing firm Messmer Mechanics, authored Senate Bill 128, which turned the legislation permitting an RDA to use for federal cash and associate with INDOT on funding regional transportation infrastructure tasks.

Through a spokesperson, Messmer declined IndyStar’s request for remark.

Dubois and Spencer counties and the cities of Jasper and Huntingburg shaped the Mid-States Corridor RDA in 2017. The RDA struck up an settlement with INDOT in 2018 to embark on the environmental affect examine course of, a requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act for tasks anticipated to make use of federal {dollars} and have important impacts to land and assets. INDOT contracted civil engineering marketing consultant Lochmeuller Group to place collectively the draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, which published in April.

The examine identifies two major functions for the freeway: to enhance enterprise and private connectivity within the area, and to enhance freeway entry to multi-modal enterprise places corresponding to Indianapolis and Louisville. Relieving congestion in Dubois County, a key function of earlier U.S. 231 research, is now a secondary aim for the Mid-States.

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The most popular route recognized within the examine would save an estimated 2-5 minutes in journey time to most locations, with the best financial savings of 9-Quarter-hour from the Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center to Rockport. Business leaders interviewed for the examine recognized freeway entry, unpredictable supply instances and elevated freight prices as key inhibitors to enterprise development and attraction, in a area the place inhabitants development has for many years lagged behind the state and nation.

The examine tasks an annual development within the area’s gross home product by someplace between $314 million and $451 million and a rise of between 1,700 and a couple of,500 jobs, on the expense of doubtless 600 to 900 acres of forest, 1,400 to 1,800 acres of farmland and 75 to 100 properties.

While acknowledging farmland as an necessary useful resource, the examine says the financial advantages of the freeway would “more than compensate for these impacts,” by higher market entry and lowered transportation prices for provides.

The calculation feels totally different for David Ring, fifth-generation proprietor of Ring Farms in Dubois County. Based on the map of the popular route, his 140-acre plot the place he grows award-winning bushels of corn could be spliced in half. In a market the place not many farmers wish to promote, he does not see the land as replaceable.

“That’s our livelihood,” he said. “That land is our factory.” 

Business involvement in public infrastructure projects

Though the Mid-States is the first example in the state of an RDA undertaking the federal highway study process, it’s certainly not the first example of such stakeholders having heavy involvement.

All projects of this scale involve stakeholder and public engagement. Local public agencies frequently participate financially in projects.

What’s different in the 2017 law is the ability for this regional body to apply directly to the largest source of money available, the federal government, to strengthen their purchasing power on projects impacting multiple counties, rather than relying on state distributions. The law also allows an RDA to seek low-interest loans from the Indiana Finance Authority.

“It’s a leverage point,” said Tom Guevara, director of Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute. “It’s a new financing arrow in their quiver.”

This is especially significant as President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure law is set to significantly increase available federal money over the next five years.

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“I do think it has the potential to be a vehicle of the future that kind of represents how local dollars may be a part of the mix,” Schroeder, the RDA chairman, told IndyStar. “The involvement of locals allows the state to stretch their dollars farther.”

The RDA mechanism certainly can help raise the profile of a project that wasn’t previously on INDOT’s radar, said Purdue University Professor Emeritus Kumares Sinha. Schroeder acknowledged that was likely the case with this project.

This may make more transparent what is a common stakeholder relationship, Sinha said.

“The idea is nothing new, and it is good the local areas are buying in in a more explicit way, putting their money where their mouth is,” he said.

The project proposal for a U.S. 231 bypass around Jasper and Huntingburg appeared in INDOT’s State Transportation Improvement Program for 2010-13, a four-year planning document outlining projects that the state plans to help fund. Planning documents since then have not programmed dollars to study the corridor.

The RDA raised $6.5 million in public and private dollars, including inputs from Dubois County and the cities of Jasper and Huntingburg, to pay for the draft EIS. Private donors contributed $3.7 million, including nearly half a million from Jasper Engines. The list of private donors, a copy of which was obtained and authenticated by IndyStar, is heavily redacted, as state law allows those who donate to public agencies to request nondisclosure.

This does not guarantee the project’s completion.

“The EIS just signals that somebody is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars studying it,” said Michael Hicks, economics professor at Ball State University. “Which, for roads, is background noise.”

As mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, the draft EIS undergoes independent review by agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state historic preservation office, and others. The final decision on whether to proceed with the project comes from state and federal transportation officials.

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The fact that an RDA is the genesis of this project does not change that federally mandated process and criteria, Jason DuPont, Lochmeuller’s project manager for the Mid-States Corridor, wrote via email.

Those transportation agencies know their decision must stand up to legal scrutiny, given that public dollars are at stake, said Ken Westlake, deputy director of the EPA’s Office of Multimedia Programs.

“NEPA is intended to be a very transparent process,” he said. “Ultimately INDOT and FHWA will have to stand behind their document.”

Hicks similarly has confidence in the NEPA process, noting that the era of earmarks, which subjected public projects to the whims of powerful politicians, is long gone.

He has sat on independent EIS review teams, and said projects have to prove a broader economic benefit beyond the scope of just a few business interests to pass muster.

“It’s more bureaucratic now, but it introduces a very high level of scrutiny on the project that didn’t exist in the 1950s when many of these highways were built,” he said. “If that road is just a benefit to somebody making wood products or shipping, it won’t get built. Because roads are expensive as all get-out.”

Will the Mid-States get built?

Because of the size of the project, the funders decided to pursue a two-tier study. The first tier, published in April, gives a broad evaluation of the project’s potential impacts. The second tier, yet unfunded, would get into specifics on smaller chunks of the project.

Each of those chunks could take years and cost about what the Tier 1 study cost, Schroeder said. No entity has committed dollars yet to Tier 2.

Generally, a project doesn’t move to the end of the NEPA process unless there’s an expectation it’ll get funded, Westlake said. In the case of the Mid-States corridor, that could be in excess of $1 billion.

Key to the NEPA process is the public input, which independent reviewers are obligated to weigh. That public comment period, which ended June 14, was dissenters’ best opportunity to have an impact.

Dozens of local businesses and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Hoosier Environmental Council, penned a letter in 2020 urging INDOT to halt the planning of the project. The Coalition Against the Mid-States Corridor has written letters to INDOT and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, marched around the Dubois County courthouse and hosted several crowded town halls.

They don’t want any more taxpayer dollars allocated toward future studies of a project they view as unnecessary, Nowotarski, a Jasper resident, said.

“We’re trying to plant seeds early,” he said.

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Dissenters were dubious of the need for building new highway terrain when Gov. Eric Holcomb announced last year $75 million in improvements on U.S. 231 in the exact stretch of the proposed Mid-States.

“This project represents ridiculous extravagance and fiscal waste on the part of the political leaders supporting this project,” Indiana Forest Alliance Executive Director Jeff Stant stated in a press release following the April launch of the draft EIS. “There is zero need — unless you own a trucking company — to build a new-terrain road right beside 231 when the state has already committed $75 million to upgrade to 231.”

Those upgrades have been thought of within the crafting of the DEIS, based on the Mid-States Corridor web site.

Schroeder pushes again towards the declare that just some freight corporations profit from the freeway, noting the listing of donors spans quite a lot of organizations and other people.

“Clearly, there’s a fair amount of industry in Dubois County, and better connectivity would certainly benefit them,” he stated. “But I think everyone who donated understands that this is a long-term strategy.”

Given the size of the assessment course of, even a profitable venture is at minimal a decade away.

“There’s certainly a lot of review that goes on,” stated Tim Maloney, senior coverage director for the Hoosier Environmental Council. “I guess we’re just more cynical.”

Cynical, he stated, of the objectivity of the premise of the venture.

There’s no denying the political nature to those main choices, specialists stated.

“Everyone has a stake in it, everyone has an important argument to make,” Guevara, of IU, stated. “The question comes down to: whose argument do they give the greatest weight to?”

Ring, the farmer, is buoyed by the ocean change in resident involvement he is noticed over the past a number of years. Back then, when he tried to rile up his neighbors, he stated he was typically met with a jaded, it’ll-happen-regardless angle. But now, he is seeing a vocal contingent rising to satisfy his enthusiastic opposition.

“I think the momentum has shifted. Whether or not it’s enough, that’s the question,” he stated. “We’re not just laying down and dying.”

Contact IndyStar transportation reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or comply with her on Twitter @kayla_dwyer17.