NEW CARLISLE, Ind. -- Retired farmer Ed Van Lue and his wife Yvette have called New Carlisle home for more than half a century.
“Yvette and I have lived here for 61 years,” Ed Van Lue specified.
Those 61 years have been full of life, love, and laundry.
However, since December of 2024, the Van Lue’s lives have been limited not by what’s full, but what is essentially empty: their well.
“Without water, you can't do anything,” Ed Van Lue said.
“I'm pissed. I'm really upset. They've got to do something,” added Yvette Van Lue.
Yvette Van Lue says she had a lot of questions when she started noticing issues with her washer last year.
“Come on, what's going on, Yvette Van Lue recalled. “And then, we figured it out on our own.
“[The laundry] takes all day, if we have a lot of laundry that accumulates,” Van Lue explained.
It’s not just that the Van Lue’s laundry takes a long time, however. Yvette showed us how washing one small load of laundry makes it impossible to run water anywhere else in the house.
The Van Lues are not the only ones suffering through these well water woes. Down the street at Whitney Churchill’s house, her sink shows a similar drastic drop off when the hose is on.
The question for the majority of this quiet New Carlisle street is simple: why is this happening?
The Van Lues say the connection is clear.
“It all added up. Amazon,” Yvette Van Lue told ABC57News.
“They had these wells over here, and they pumped the water completely out of here, Ed Van Lue added.
The couple recalls first noticing changes to their water pressure and supply around the time construction picked up at the massive new Amazon data center right in their backyard.
“It's very frustrating when you live here for so many years and then somebody comes in and affects so many people so badly,” Yvette Van Lue said.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources recently told the South Bend Tribune to blame drought, and not heavy pumping at the data center, for well water issues in New Carlisle.
Residents, however, are highly skeptical.
“It’s absolute nonsense,” Ed Van Lue scoffed.
“Come on! Our granddaughter knows better than that,” Yvette Van Lue added.
Underneath the Van Lue’s doubt comes the wonder if their water issues will ever be fixed.
It’s sad because we're getting older and older,” Yvette Van Lue said. “But, it'll work out somehow, one way or another.”
Sadly, Yvette Van Lue will have to try to navigate these troubled waters without her other half.
The day after our last interview with the couple, Ed Van Lue went into cardiac arrest and passed away at the age of 83.
With the blessing of the Van Lue family, we continued our quest for answers and accountability.
I first contacted the Indiana DNR on November 7th, asking for a Zoom interview with Marty Benson.
He's the Public Information Officer for the Indiana DNR, and the person quoted in the South Bend Tribune's article which says drought is to blame for the water supply issues.
He declined an interview but offered to answer questions via email.
We pressed for an on-camera interview, but all we got was a written statement. It says the DNR received three complaints of domestic well failures about a mile east of New Carlisle this spring, and none since.
The statement also says “DNR has found groundwater levels to be consistent with historic groundwater levels,” and “summer drought is certainly a factor in low groundwater levels.”
However, if groundwater levels are consistent with historic levels, how could drought be the cause of well water failure?
I asked another expert to help answer this question.
Alan Hamlet is a Professor of Hydrology at the University of Notre Dame.
He said a severe drought can sometimes affect the water table height and cause well water supply issues.
However, according to Hamlet, local drought levels are nowhere near severe, only running about fifteen percent below normal.
“Groundwater is very complicated,” Hamlet said. “Drought plays a role, but it would not account for severe impacts across the region now.”
I asked Benson at the Indiana DNR again to confirm what he told the newspaper.
Is it the DNR’s conclusion that drought is causing low groundwater levels in the New Carlisle area?
In their response, they didn’t confirm drought was the exclusive cause but repeated it’s a factor. They also added the wells that failed were what they call “drive point wells.” They’re “shallow and more susceptible to failure than traditional drilled wells.”
So, is the depth of the wells the root of the problem?
According to the homeowners I spoke with, most of the wells in this area of New Carlisle are shallow.
When Ed Van Lue installed his well back in the 1980s, the Kankakee aquifer, which New Carlisle sits on top of, was very easy to reach. Van Lue said the water supply never wavered, even in extreme droughts like 2012 or 1988.
“In 88 we had one of the severest [sic] droughts we've ever had here. And I don't know if anybody lost their water well,” Ed Van Lue recalled.
One more time, I emailed the DNR asking if the South Bend Tribune’s reporting was accurate, but their response was the same.
We still hadn’t received the answers to the questions we had. So, we went down to Indianapolis and stopped by the Indiana Government Center to try and find some answers.
We were able to speak with Indiana DNR Communications Director Holly Lawson.
I asked her what the DNR says are the causes of the water issues near New Carlisle.
“I think it's a multitude of issues,” Lawson told ABC57News. “I think drought, as we provided to you in the statement, is certainly one reason.”
When I pressed her, Lawson told me this: “Studies have found that the significant water withdrawals are not the impact here.”
However, despite repeated requests via email to do so, the DNR did not provide ABC57News with a copy of those studies.
Lawson said the DNR's Technical Expert was unavailable that day.
I asked hydrologist Alan Hamlet what he thinks.
“It's both the drought and the pumping from the data centers together that are causing these impacts.”
I asked Holly Lawson if she had a message to those people affected by these water issues for the first time in 60 years.
“I don't know if I have anything more to add beyond the statement I've already provided,” Lawson said.
SO, what happens now?
In our interview, Holly Lawson mentioned the Indiana "Ground Water Rights Law." It's a state law intended to protect homeowners from significant ground water withdrawal facilities, like the nearby data center.
The Indiana DNR told ABC57News that you can submit a written complaint by mail or by email to them, and if an investigation confirms it, you may be entitled to an alternate water supply.
However, The Van Lue family showed ABC57News that they have made multiple pleas to the DNR through email over the past year. While a few representatives of the agency have taken observations of their property, the Van Lue’s water problems continue to flow.