Gov. Mike Braun signed two executive orders Wednesday. One aims to reduce environmental “over-regulation” to help businesses grow and another to cut environmental justice out of decision-making.
It's not clear how much they would change.
Braun's "no more stringent than" federal law order
Among other things, the first order said Indiana can’t have new environmental rules stricter than federal ones — unless they’re in a state law or the governor himself considers them necessary.
Braun said only having to follow one set of rules will encourage businesses to invest and grow in Indiana.
“Where they know the compliance framework already — not having to guess what it might be," he said.
Sam Carpenter is the executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council. He said these orders come as the Trump administration is looking to rollback federal environmental protections.
“This is the exact wrong time to put limits on the state’s ability to protect Hoosiers quality of life, the air we breathe, the water and our natural places," Carpenter said.
Indiana already doesn’t have many environmental rules that go beyond federal law — few of them get past state lawmakers, who are notified when a proposed rule would be stricter.
The order also directs environmental agencies to find “burdensome” environmental rules and report them to the governor by July.
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Braun's order on environmental justice and decision-making
Under the second order, agencies like the Indiana Department of Environmental Management couldn’t consider environmental justice when granting permits to facilities that pollute.
“Indiana's environmental policy will be based solely on sound science, not on a political agenda," Braun said.
Paula Brooks is the environmental justice director with the Hoosier Environmental Council. She said the order insinuates that environmental initiatives are race-based.
“But actually they’re broader than that,” she said.
The Biden administration’s Justice 40 initiative, for example, also took into account things like income and health disparities.
IDEM has said it doesn’t tend to consider how much pollution is in an area — or the race or income of people who live there — when granting industry permits.
Braun said there are areas of environmental quality where Indiana could do better — like farm runoff — but he said air quality in the state has been “pretty well addressed.”
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory, Indiana industries release the eighth most toxic chemicals into the air of any state.
Rebecca is our energy and environment reporter. Contact her at rthiele@iu.edu or follow her on Twitter at @beckythiele.