Indiana Creates Search Engine For Air Permits On The Internet

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) and Access Indiana have worked together to add an online air permits search engine to the Web. The Air Quality Permit Status Search Engine sorts air permits by source name, county, permit number, time frame and other criteria. The status and information in the permit will be automatically updated when changes occur.

"IDEM is working to make Indiana's environmental permitting process easy to understand and simple to access," said IDEM commissioner Thomas W. Easterly. "Being able to hop online and find every air permit in the state brings our agency one step closer to Hoosiers. What used to take an afternoon in the file room can be done with a few clicks of a mouse."

The old system forced the user to download the entire permit file in order to view basic information. The search engine provides permit status and displays information on a summary page. The complete permit remains available for downloading from the summary page.