Many Hobart residents have been wondering how it’s possible that the 755 acre Data Center can be built on a wetland and next to Deep River. Without much transparency, any wetland credits that have been purchased are not evidient at this point.
What Are Wetland Credits?
Well, it’s a trade off that is paid for with money, literally. Instead of building a small, isolated replacement wetland on a construction site, developers can purchase credits from established mitigation “banks”. These so-called banks are large, professionally restored or preserved wetland areas that have been ecologically evaluated and approved by regulatory agencies. A developer buys a credit, they are essentially paying a third party environmental operator to take on the legal liability and long-term maintenance of the environmental offset.
Hobart is inside the Calumet Dunes Service Area
Northern Indiana is split into two geographic zones called service areas. We found a similar wetland credit online that compensates for destroying 325 linear feet of a local stream channel feeding into Sprout Creek, and also to replace the 5.49 acres of natural wetlands, but it is not clear about who paid for the wetland credits. Here is a sample of a wetland credit inside the Calumet Dunes Service Area. IDEM DOCUMENT.
Hopefully, Amazon has purchased wetland credits or will be purchasing stream credits for the state’s Calumet Dunes Service Area for the Hobart Data center. By law, the money Amazon pays for these stream credits must stay inside this specific northern zone. This ensures that the environmental repairs happen in the same general region where the damage occurred. A portion of these regional credits are tied to state-approved private projects like the Old City Light Mitigation Bank, which actively restores and protects natural habitats right within the Calumet-Dunes watershed boundary.
Many credits have already been purchased for the New Carlisle Data Center and new one in Jasper County Data Center area.
Donna Popp Seeley took that picture, while she was kayaking Deep River. When the water is high enough, you can kayak 15 miles to the Indiana Dunes.
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