INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ Three environmental groups are pressing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to either assume oversight of Indiana's water pollution control program or order the state to correct what they call serious deficiencies with the state's coal mine permitting program.
 
The Hoosier Environmental Council, the Sierra Club Hoosier Chapter and the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center contend Indiana is allowing “patently illegal pollution discharges.''
 
The groups say in a recent letter to the EPA that those discharges continue more than three years after they petitioned the EPA review the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's general permit rules for water discharges.
 
IDEM spokesman Dan Goldblatt says the agency “firmly disagrees'' with the groups' statement that the agency is allowing illegal pollution. He says the “EPA approves of the way we do things.''