Industry, power plants, golf clubs: Here's who is pumping out the most water in Indiana

Sarah Bowman, Indianapolis Star
·3 min read

Indiana has nearly 4,300 users across the state withdrawing significant amounts of water. Between them, they have the capacity to pump more than 8 trillion gallons annually — that's enough to fill more than three Geist Reservoirs every single day for a year.

These users range from industrial facilities and power plants to farms and golf clubs. Some are pumping out only 15,000 gallons every year, which wouldn't even fill one Olympic swimming pool. Others are pumping out a lot, and we mean a lot, more — enough to fill hundreds of thousands of pools from a single intake.

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Here are the 10 biggest withdrawals across the state for 2021, the most recent year for which data is available from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. We've also included some other interesting tidbits related to water use in Indiana.

Who are the biggest water users in Indiana?

This may come as no surprise, but the 10 biggest water withdrawals on an annual basis are all from two sectors in particular: energy production and industry. Both manufacturing and power generation take incredible amounts of water in their processes, especially for cooling.

These withdrawals also are all coming from surface intakes, or withdrawing from surface waters throughout the state such as the Wabash, White and Ohio rivers.

Collectively, these water withdrawals pump out 1.4 trillion gallons of water on an annual basis — which is more than half of the more than 2 trillion gallons withdrawn across the state every year.

Now, some of these users have additional intakes across the state. But these are the 10 biggest withdrawals and their users from a single intake, without any repeats, from 2021. So without any further ado, here they are:

  1. Indiana Kentucky Electric Corporation: 433.3 billion gallons

  2. Duke Energy Indiana: 218.2 billion gallons

  3. Alcoa Warrick Power Plant: 195.2 billion gallons

  4. Cleveland Cliffs Burns Harbor: 178 billion gallons

  5. Hoosier Energy Rural Electric Coop: 138.9 billion gallons

  6. US Steel Corporation: 78.5 billion gallons

  7. Indianapolis Power & Light (now AES Indiana): 71.2 billion gallons

  8. Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Company (now CenterPoint): 64.1 billion gallons

  9. BP Products of North America: 35 billion gallons

  10. Cleveland Cliffs Whiting: 24 billion gallons

Who are the biggest users in the other sectors?

Across the state of Indiana, energy production uses the most water overall: about 1 trillion gallons. Industry is a close second at 700 billion gallons. From there, public drinking water supply uses 236 billion gallons, followed by agriculture at 71 billion gallons.

Here are the biggest users from the other categories outside energy and industry.

Public supply: Citizens Energy Group at its largest intake withdraws 19 billion gallons.

Agriculture: Morehouse Farms LLC at its largest intake withdraws 676 million gallons.

Miscellaneous: Lakes County Parks & Recreation Board at its largest intake withdraws 650 million gallons.

Rural: Indiana Department of Natural Resources at its largest intake withdraws 1 billion gallons.

Which Indiana counties use the most water?

It may come as a surprise, but the county that uses the most water in Indiana is not the state's biggest. In fact, it's not even in the top half of Indiana's most populous counties.

Perhaps it's not a surprise, some of the state's biggest industrial facilities are often located away from population centers in more remote areas. That's why Marion County doesn't even break the top five of counties that withdraw the most water in Indiana. This data is from 2022.

  1. Jefferson County (population is 33,000): 409.4 billion gallons

  2. Lake County (population is 500,000): 296 billion gallons

  3. Vermillion County (population is 15,000): 229.1 billion gallons

  4. Warrick County (population is 65,000): 219.5 billion gallons

  5. Porter County (population is 175,000): 187.6 billion gallons

Marion County comes in at seventh, withdrawing 90.2 billion gallons (and has a population of close to 1 million). Hamilton County withdraws 32 billion gallons with a population of 365,000.

Call IndyStar reporter Sarah Bowman at 317-444-6129 or email at sarah.bowman@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook: @IndyStarSarah. Connect with IndyStar’s environmental reporters: Join The Scrub on Facebook.

IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana's top 10 water users pump more than 1 trillion gallons a year