# Research Note — 2026-06-02 (AMI overview counts + local-context refresh)

> **Status: Confirmed-context update — not a protocol change by itself**

## Confirmed facts
- EPA’s Northwest Indiana Program Contacts page still lists Victoria Wittig, Ph.D. as the Northwest Indiana Urban Waters Ambassador at Purdue University Northwest in Hammond, and the page was last updated on 2026-01-30. [^1]
- EPA’s Grand Calumet River AOC remediation page was last updated on 2026-02-19 and still keeps Junction Reaches split into the IHC south of Columbus Drive, the West Branch between Indianapolis Boulevard and the IHC, and the East Branch between the IHC and Kennedy Avenue; Lake George Middle and Lake George East remain separate footprints, and Lake George Canal monitoring continues through 2027 with possible 2028 follow-on remediation. [^2]
- NIPSCO’s AMI overview page says the rollout has been underway since March 2024 and is being installed in phases for approximately 500,000 electric customers and 900,000 gas customers across the service area. [^3]
- NIPSCO’s electric AMI page still gives a more specific figure of approximately 490,000 electric customers, and the gas AMI page still gives approximately 870,000 gas customers. [^4][^5]
- The NIOSH occupational EMF manual remains the reference for this pilot’s measurement logic and keeps spot, personal, area, walkthrough, source-survey, and field-characterization methods distinct. [^6]

## Practical interpretation
- Treat the AMI overview page counts as rounded program-scale context, not as a route-level exposure variable.
- When logging AMI context in the field, record which NIPSCO page supplied the count so overview rounding does not get mistaken for a new local condition.
- Use the overview page for broad scale and the electric/gas subpages for workflow details.
- No change to the exposure design is needed today beyond that bookkeeping.

## Hypotheses
- If the project later compares AMI-related route context across dates, source-page bookkeeping will prevent the 490k/870k subpage figures from being conflated with the 500k/900k overview figures.
- The program-scale counts are probably rounded differently across pages rather than reflecting a meaningful design shift, but that should be confirmed only if a future comparison depends on the exact number.

## Sources
- [^1]: https://www.epa.gov/urbanwaterspartners/program-contacts-northwest-indiana-indiana
- [^2]: https://www.epa.gov/great-lakes-aocs/remediation-and-restoration-projects-grand-calumet-river-aoc
- [^3]: https://www.nipsco.com/services/work-in-your-neighborhood/advanced-metering-ami
- [^4]: https://www.nipsco.com/services/work-in-your-neighborhood/advanced-metering-ami/electric-ami
- [^5]: https://www.nipsco.com/services/work-in-your-neighborhood/advanced-metering-ami/gas-ami
- [^6]: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/98-154/default.html