Articles

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‘Solar gardens’ catching on, but legality unclear in Indiana

Imagine seeing the price of gas drop 50 percent, then finding out you couldn’t take advantage because of a law that excluded drivers who lease their vehicles or whose fuel tank is on the wrong side. That’s pretty much the experience of most would-be solar energy users.

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Decades-long fight over landfill quietly concludes

A 37-year fight over a planned solid waste landfill in Anderson ended recently, concluding one of the longest environmental battles in state history. Only a few loads of trash were ever dumped at the Mallard Lake Landfill, but fortunes were spent litigating it.

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Deveau: RCRA threatens validity of brownfield redevelopment

During the past 12 months a troubling trend has developed in the area of brownfield redevelopment. In several routine property transactions, buyers, sellers and lawyers have had the unpleasant experience of having their deals scuttled by a questionable application of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

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Hemp’s growing pains in Indiana

Industrial hemp was legalized in Indiana when Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill into law this year, but you still can’t grow the crop in the Hoosier State.

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Duke can charge ratepayers for time construction delayed on Edwardsport plant

The Indiana Court of Appeals has affirmed grant of Duke Energy Indiana’s request to include the amount spent during an 80-day delay in construction of the coal gasification plant in Edwardsport in a rate adjustment rider. Several parties intervened, claiming construction delays attributable to Duke should not be chargeable to ratepayers.

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Pashos: Is cost-of-service regulation relevant in today’s world?

Today, public utilities are experiencing significant cost increases, due to issues such as federal environmental and other mandates, and the need to upgrade decades-old infrastructure. These cost pressures, combined with fast-paced technology, market changes and other states’ experimentation with retail deregulation, are causing policymakers and others to ask whether cost-of-service regulation remains relevant or whether deregulation might be a preferable alternative.

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Indiana joins brief seeking to halt EPA-led plan to clean up Chesapeake Bay

Decades of squabbles over cleaning up one of America’s most historic but polluted waters resulted in an agreement between states and the federal government that supporters say could restore the Chesapeake Bay to a swimmable, fishable national treasure. But if Indiana and other states without a direct stake in the Chesapeake have their way, the cleanup hashed out between bay states and the Environmental Protection Agency will be stopped.

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A bottleneck is bedeviling Indiana’s mighty wind turbines

Gusts blowing across Interstate 65 north of Lafayette one recent day were powerful enough to shake cars but impotent to budge the blades of the giant wind turbines dotting the sparse landscape. On an ideal day for generating electricity, the colossal pinwheels were eerily still, and for the most unlikely of reasons. They’d been turned off.

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Reprimand issued for ALJ in IURC-Duke scandal

A former administrative law judge with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission has been reprimanded by the Indiana Supreme Court, which ruled this week that a harsher sanction was unwarranted because he’d already been punished enough for seeking a job with Duke Energy while making rulings concerning the utility.

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Company can’t prevail in appeal on claims of collusion

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the confirmation of a sale of an ethanol plant in South Bend to a joint venture, rejecting a nonbidder’s claim that the establishment of the joint venture amounted to collusion that spoiled the auction.

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