Protect Lake Michigan Campaign
This campaign began to demand cleanup, accountability, and protections for the communities living in the shadow of the toxic coal ash sites leaking dangerous pollutants into groundwater and nearby lakes and rivers.
Indiana has more coal ash sites than any other state. Coal ash, or coal combustion residuals (CCR), is toxic waste from burning coal, containing poisonous substances linked to severe health issues like asthma, kidney disease, heart disease, cancer, and death. Most of Indiana’s sites are actively leaking, contaminating groundwater and surface water.
In 2015, the Obama administration’s EPA enacted the Coal Combustion Residuals Rule, the first safeguards against coal ash, spurred by the devastating Kingston Fossil Plant disaster that blanketed the surrounding community with 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge and sickened hundreds of cleanup workers. However, the rule contained dangerous loopholes, excluding approximately half a billion tons of coal ash in landfills and waste piles that predated the law, as well as dumpsites at decommissioned power plants.
Campaign Timeline
Michigan City Spotlight
In Michigan City, Indiana, NIPSCO’s Michigan City Generating Station (MCGS) coal-burning plant has towered above the shores of Lake Michigan for nearly a century and is set to retire by 2028. For decades, in addition to the town already being paved with coal ash in road and yard beds, the region’s utility, Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), disposed of its coal ash in a landfill in the neighboring Town of Pines. The landfill began to leak, contaminating the town’s drinking water and soil with 1 million tons of coal ash. Due to community members organized as People In Need of Environmental Safety, the EPA later declared the site a Superfund Alternative site.
Today, history is at risk of repeating itself as an estimated 2 million cubic yards of fill containing toxic coal ash rests on “made land” that extends into Lake Michigan at the MCGS and is held back from a catastrophe only by a deteriorating steel sea wall that is more than 70 years old. The plant’s environmental justice footprint is deeply felt by low-income residents and those of color in the neighboring community on the city’s west side.
According to NIPSCO’s own reports, the huge coal ash deposit is contaminating the onsite groundwater and leaking into Lake Michigan and Trail Creek, which is further threatened by the worsening climate crisis.
As we anticipate the scheduled closure of the MCGS in 2028, a new development has transpired. A settlement agreement between NIPSCO and the LaPorte County Commissioners, as well as other parties, in the final order regarding the utility’s electric rate hike, calls for a study to evaluate the possibility of installing a combined cycle gas turbine, a peaker gas plant, battery storage, or other energy technologies at the MCGS site.
JTNWI is working diligently to advocate for a comprehensive cleanup and decommissioning of the site, along with a community-led vision and reuse that supports job creation, bolsters the local economy, and promotes the equitable distribution of resources and power.
Tell EPA don’t delay on coal ash cleanup
Contact EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to not weaken life-saving coal ash pollution protections to ensure the safe and timely closure of hazardous, toxic dumps.