5 19Ft. 700,000 Lbs. Nipsco Transformers Going In Deep River Watershed for Amazon Hyperscale Data Center

Editor’s Note, This Installation is a half mile from a Bald Eagles Nest, (Shown Below)

And now, screw the wetlands, let’s make sure this data center gets power. NIPSCO has applied to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for Section 401 Water Quality Certification No. WQC001542 to move forward with Phase II of its Hobart-to-Orion 345-kV transmission line project.

The application calls for another 2.4 miles of 345-kV transmission line, and getting it built means construction will affect seven wetlands along the route. Five are emergent wetlands, which are the marshy wetlands most people would recognize by grasses, sedges and other soft-stem plants growing in saturated ground. The other two are scrub-shrub wetlands, where shrubs and young woody vegetation dominate the wet ground.

NIPSCO is proposing permanent fill in portions of three wetlands totaling 0.018 acre, or about 784 square feet. Construction mats, access and workspace would also temporarily impact 2.428 acres across all seven wetlands.

Why are we suddenly building electrical infrastructure on this scale?

MISO’s transmission planning records identify a NIPSCO project called the “New Hobart Load Addition” at 1,500 megawatts.

Most people have absolutely no reason to know what 1,500 megawatts means, so let’s put that number into perspective.

That’s 1.5 gigawatts of electrical demand, roughly equivalent to the generating capacity of one and a half large 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors.

Amazon’s agreement with NIPSCO ultimately contemplates its data center load growing as high as 2,400 megawatts by the end of 2032.

Now those massive transformers headed into Hobart start making a little more sense. Hobart officials discussed the upcoming NIPSCO transformer deliveries at the November 4 City Council meeting. Each transformer was described as approximately 19 feet tall and weighing around 700,000 pounds.

That’s 350 tons each. This is what it actually takes to feed electrical demand measured in gigawatts.

The data center buildings may sit on their own property, but the power needed to run them doesn’t magically appear at the property line. It requires substations, transformers, rights-of-way and miles of high-voltage transmission infrastructure running through the surrounding community.

Now that infrastructure has reached seven wetlands. IDEM has not approved WQC001542 yet. The agency published the application November 2, and the public has until November 23, 2026 to submit comments about potential water-quality impacts or request a public hearing.

#HobartIndiana #DataCenters #NorthwestIndiana #LakeCountyIndiana #NIPSCO

OTHER REFERENCES YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN . . .

(these are not very searchable) . . .

2017 – NIRPC – 377 Pages. Deep River Portage Burns Waterway Final

Deep River-Portage Burns Waterway watershed (Figure 1). It is the largest of six watersheds located within the Little Calumet-Galien sub-basin, draining approximately 180 square miles of north central Lake and Porter Counties to Lake Michigan. Some the major streams located within the watershed include Deep River, Main Beaver Dam Ditch, Turkey Creek, and the Little Calumet River’s West Branch. This watershed management plan is the result of numerous communities and organizations coming together to establish a framework to restore the nearly 125 miles of impaired stream within its boundaries.

2024 – Save the Dunes Conservation Action Plan – 50 pages Hobart Marsh And Deep River Conservation Area was designated a Priority 1 Conservation Area by Save the Dunes Executive Summary of 2023

2016 – IDEM – 373 Pages – Deep River Watershed Plan, Click here

The Deep River/Portage Burns watershed, identified as the hydrologic unit code (HUC) watershed 0404000105, covers a drainage area of approximately 180 square miles in northwestern Indiana, of which 104 square miles are located in Lake County, and 20 square miles are located in Porter County. There are approximately 125 miles of impaired streams within the watershed boundary.

2025 EPA Urban Waters Federal Partnership Work Plan: Restoring Duck Creek Tributary, Hobart Marsh Properties Managed by the Indiana DNR, Division of Nature Preserves, and Hobart Marsh Conservation Area known as NIPSCO Row.

(2025 )

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: Gerald Ford School of Public Policy:

What Happens When Data Centers Come To Town :

Current technologies force a tradeoff between energy and water efficiency, limiting sustainable solutions. Data Centers Do Not Bring in High Paying Jobs; Data Center Tax Breaks Only Benefit Corporations; Reduces Tax Revenue for School Districts; Higher Energy Rates for Consumers; Higher Resource Consumption; And Much More.

In a CWP Reports , Center for Watershed Protection ‘s There Are 100 Scientific Studies On How Urban Development Leads To Habitat Loss, Altered Water Levels And Water‑Flow systems, Changing Sediment buildup And Nutrient Cycles, And Thereby Degrading Wetland Functions. (Center for Watershed Protection)

5 19Ft. 700,000 Lbs. Nipsco Transformers Going In Deep River Watershed for Amazon Hyperscale Data Center

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