INDOT files lawsuit against Dubois County property owners over Mid-States Corridor
Tom Bartelt recognizes the irony of his family’s farm being honored by the Indiana Department of Agriculture while being sued by the Indiana Department of Transportation.
The farm, established in 1851 and recognized as a Hoosier Homestead Centennial and Sesquicentennial farm last Friday, is directly in the path of the Mid-States Corridor.
“It’s going diagonally through the entire farm,” Mr. Bartelt said last week.
“My house is the only building on the farm that is not in the proposed path,” he added. “And it could be 100 feet outside my front door.”
Mr. Bartelt’s sister, Kathy Wagner, said facing the destruction of their land would have killed their dad, Leroy Bartelt, if he were still around.
Along with the Bartelt-Klosterman farm, the farm owned by Francis and Kathleen Vogler, also recognized with a Hoosier Homestead Centennial award on Friday, is potentially in the corridor’s path.
Bartelt and Vogler are both named in a lawsuit filed by the Indiana Department of Transportation against 121 Dubois County landowners who have refused to allow surveyors onto their property. Lochmueller Group is now completing the Dubois County portion of the corridor’s Tier 2 study but has been unable to complete surveying as landowners have refused access to their properties.
The 121 landowners named in the lawsuit sent cease and desist letters to the Lochmueller Group and INDOT stating they would not allow them on their properties to complete the surveys.
The complaint, filed March 6 in Dubois Circuit Court, seeks declaratory relief and a preliminary injunction prohibiting landowners from interfering with INDOT’s access to their properties.
At the center of the dispute is INDOT’s statutory authority to enter private property for survey purposes versus landowners’ desire to protect their property rights.
According to the lawsuit, INDOT has been tasked with overseeing the Mid-States Corridor project, which aims to improve highway access to southern Indiana. The project requires an environmental assessment of lands within a 2,000-foot-wide corridor approved by the Federal Highway Administration in September 2023.
The properties in question fall within “Section 2” of the project, which extends from I-64, swings east around Huntingburg and Jasper, and ends near State Road 56 at Haysville.
INDOT claims it has made multiple attempts to notify property owners and gain access to their land since July 2024, including mailed notices, phone calls, door-to-door visits, and even visits alongside local law enforcement in October.
“Despite INDOT’s efforts, the Project has stalled,” the complaint states. “INDOT needs to access the Properties in order to complete SIU Section 2, but Defendants have refused this access.”
The state agency cites Indiana Code § 8-23-7-26, which permits INDOT and its representatives to enter properties to conduct surveys and assessments after providing at least five days’ notice.
The complaint identifies attorney Russell Sipes of Sipes Law Firm as the author of the “Cease and Desist” letters sent to INDOT and Lochmueller Group.
At a meeting held last December, Sipes told a crowd of landowners that the letters could be sent to force INDOT to use the courts to gain access to their properties to slow the process. At the meeting, Sipes asked, “What happens when Judge Verkamp (Dubois County Circuit Court) has a hundred hearings to schedule just for people to come in and be ordered to let surveyors on their property, along with his regular schedule?”
Reflecting those actions and statements, INDOT’s complaint alleges Sipes hopes to “gum up the works” by causing delays through multiple court hearings.
The defendants include numerous individuals, couples, trusts, and limited liability companies that own parcels—mainly farmland with some residential properties—within or alongside the corridor that must be surveyed for environmental impact.
INDOT argues that field surveys have minimal impact on the land and, at most, require the retrieval of small ground samples. They maintain that the environmental assessments are a necessary step in the project’s development and that it has followed all legal requirements for notifying property owners before attempting to access their land. Field crews carry high-visibility equipment, State ID cards, copies of the notice letters, and copies of the relevant state code.
In its request for a preliminary injunction, INDOT claims it should be allowed access based on the state statute and argues that the defendants’ actions threaten to delay the project further
INDOT also stated they were concerned about the safety of their employees and the agents working on their behalf, though Bartelt said the letter he sent states if a court orders him to allow them on his property, he won’t do anything to hinder them in any way.
The lawsuit asks the court to set a hearing for a preliminary injunction within the next month and to declare INDOT’s right to access properties in and adjoining the corridor during the litigation and moving forward.
The case is scheduled for an initial hearing in Dubois Circuit Court in the coming weeks.
The Mid-States Corridor project has been controversial in the region. A grassroots movement, Stop the Mid-States Corridor on Facebook, and the establishment of the nonprofit Property Rights Alliance have organized against the proposed highway based on several factors, including the destruction of farmland and homes. They have argued the highway will cut off county roads, hurt the environment, and detrimentally impact the bypassed cities.
The Property Rights Alliance met last week to discuss the letters. Chair Jason McCoy, a Martin County resident whose land is potentially on the road’s path, told those attending that they had contracted with Sipes to represent the landowners who had donated to the Alliance. He affirmed that Sipes would respond to the injunction on behalf of those donors and told the group that if they wanted Sipes to represent them, they could donate to the Property Rights Alliance.
McCoy also warned those attending that the injunction wasn’t the big fight in the Alliance’s efforts to oppose the Mid-States Corridor but just the first jab.
At Friday’s photo-op celebrating the Hoosier Homestead farms, Stop the Mid-States Corridor hats can be seen in the photos featuring the Bartelt-Klosterman and Vogler families with ISDA Director Don Lamb and Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith.
Mr. Bartelt said he planned on pushing the Mid-States Corridor out of his mind while accepting the awards. He hoped to meet with legislators after the event and asked State Senator Darryl Schmitt to tour his farm to see what would be destroyed. Since Schmitt operates a farm near Ireland, Bartelt hopes he will empathize with their cause.
“It feels like the people behind this project have no consideration for the people whose lives are ruined by this,” Mr. Bartelt said.
