UPDATE: March 3, 2020: The Indiana House voted 58-37 on Tuesday to approve Senate Bill 229 largely along party lines. The Senate can now either accept changes the House made to the bill or negotiate a final version.

Earlier:

Lawmakers on Feb. 26 narrowed the scope of a bill that would remove state regulation of certain wetlands before advancing the measure forward in the Indiana House, but environmental advocates still worry the legislation would lead to more flooding, less clean water and the loss of wildlife.

The House Environmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines, with Republicans in the 5-4 majority, to send the Senate bill to the full House.

The bill ultimately comes down to a dispute between Hamilton County Surveyor Kent Ward and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

The bill's author, Sen. Victoria Spartz, R-Noblesville, said Ward told her IDEM overreached when it made Hamilton County pay more than $140,000 in taxpayer money to restore wetlands the county cleared while repairing a drainage pipe.

Wetlands bill: Lawmaker wants to deregulate wetlands. Her family once was cited for bulldozing them.

IDEM said Hamilton County failed to obtain a permit to tear down a wooded wetland in a farm field when it repaired the drain. Ward said he believed it wasn't necessary to protect the small wooded area.

The bill would remove state oversight of such wetlands near what are called regulated drains, which are thousands of miles of man-made ditches, streams, sewers and drainage pipes constructed throughout Indiana in the past century to alleviate flooding.

IDEM and several environmental groups, including the Hoosier Environmental Council, the Indiana Wildlife Association, and the Sierra Club of Indiana, opposed the bill. They say the bill reaches too far to correct one dispute.

They say the bill would allow surveyors too much authority to widen, deepen or move regulated drains without state oversight, potentially creating situations that could lead to more flooding, loss of wetlands and wildlife. They worry the bill would remove state experts from monitoring certain wetlands while allowing each county to regulate drains differently, creating a patchwork of rules across Indiana.

"This allows anyone doing work on a drain to do whatever they want to do to that drain, even if it may cause destruction of high-quality wetlands," said Indra Frank of the Hoosier Environmental Council.

Republicans on the committee tried to address that concern, but IDEM, the environmental advocates and Democrats say they didn't go far enough.

The committee narrowed the scope of the legislation to say counties could only do work within a 75-foot easement without obtaining a state permit. IDEM and the environmental groups, though, pointed out the bill still would allow what they saw as major reconstruction of drains within those easements.

Democrat B. Patrick Bauer tried to amend the legislation further to limit the scope of work counties could perform to simple maintenance. IDEM officials said they would drop opposition to the bill with such an amendment.

Republicans opposed it, though, and it failed along party lines.

Spartz indicated that she was surprised to hear so many environmental advocates felt the bill would affect water quality and flooding because she thinks the bill merely resolves a dispute between agencies. She said taxpayers ultimately are on the hook should IDEM makes counties restore wetlands.

"I really think in the state of Indiana," she said, "if we need to have more wetlands, maybe we should look at a policy of how we should incentive."

She also criticized IDEM.

"I think IDEM should do a better job of looking at water quality," she said.

Good government experts also have expressed concern over the appropriateness of Spartz's role in authoring the legislation. In 2007, Spartz's family planned a multimillion-dollar project to develop a Super Target in Noblesville. IDEM halted the project after the family bulldozed and filled in wetlands near a county-regulated drain on the property because they had failed to obtain state and federal permissions.

Spartz has denied that situation had anything to do with her decision to file the bill. She has said she was not directly involved with that project and hadn't realized IDEM was involved.

Call IndyStar reporter Chris Sikich at 317-444-6036. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisSikich.