The Indiana Department of Environmental Management has rescheduled a public hearing for a permit for a wetlands project in Hobart, according to an email from the agency.
The virtual public hearing was originally scheduled for Aug. 12 but was rescheduled for 4 p.m. Aug. 19 due to power outages in Lake County from Tuesday’s storms.
A link to the public hearing is available on the updated public hearing notice, which can be found on IDEM’s website. The applicant is Schottenstein Property Group, with V3 Companies as the project agent.
According to IDEM documents, the proposed permit is for an industrial development that would impact 5.49 acres of wetlands and 325 linear feet of stream channel with fill and excavation. It would affect “two emergent wetlands and one unnamed tributary to Sprout Creek.”
The project is not related to the Hobart data center, according to IDEM, which is located near 61st Avenue and Colorado Street. The wetlands project is located near the intersection of U.S. 30 and Colorado Street, near the Crossing of Hobart shopping center and Walmart.
According to IDEM documents, the proposed project would develop warehouses and associated infrastructure. The targeted area is primarily cropland, woodlands and wetlands.
The project is also within range of the federally endangered Indiana bat and rusty patched bumblebee, and the threatened northern long-eared bat, according to IDEM documents.
“However, there is no habitat for these species at the proposed project site, so we agree that the proposed project is not likely to adversely affect these endangered and threatened/proposed endangered species,” said a letter included in IDEM documents.
Ashley Williams, executive director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana, said in a Friday email statement that her organization strongly opposes the proposed permit.
“IDEM is weighing whether to allow a developer to wipe out over five acres of wetlands and a 325-foot stream in the heart of Sprout Creek and the larger Hobart Deep River watershed, right next to the Amazon Hobart Tech Park data center campus that residents have been organizing mightily against,” Williams said. “Shockingly, a fifth of that destruction is for a stormwater pond that the Army Corps has already deemed unacceptable as mitigation. Replacing those wetlands 30 miles away does nothing to protect Hobart from further flooding or safeguard our water quality.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about the wetlands project, Williams said in an email, and IDEM documents confirmed.
According to the documents, the EPA noted that the work could affect almost all of the site’s wetlands. The project’s Army Corps permit is still pending.
“We demand IDEM see the cumulative picture of what’s being built around our communities, which already suffer the burden of industrial pollution, and reject this isolated, short-sighted decision,” Williams said.