Haynes was offered a higher ranking position within Indiana Gas at the Chicago headquarters, but by then he had become aware of the business's connection to the corrupt and disgraced monopolist Charles T. Yerkes. A deeply religious man who feared involvement in any corruption, Haynes entertained the offer only briefly; Bertha's advice to refuse the position persuaded him and he declined the offer and instead sought a position more removed from the company's Chicago leadership. After the pipeline became fully operational in 1892, Haynes moved to Kokomo where he was made a supervisor of the Indiana Gas's local operations. The Indiana General Assembly began attempts to regulate the gas industry and accused the field operations of various companies of gross waste; Indiana Gas became the primary target of scathing reports. Haynes helped the company compile reports and offered opinions on the validity of their claims. He was disturbed to find that many of the claims proved true, and advocated that the gas be used more conservatively. He specifically recommended that the flambeaus (the flames fed by natural gas to show that the gas was flowing) be extinguished, as they were found to be the largest source of waste. He calculated that the company daily wasted $10,000 ($ in 2009 chained dollars) worth of gas by burning flambeaus, a figure that shocked the company's leaders. Despite his support of the governmental anti-waste regulations, he was steadfastly against other rules that regulated pressure and hindered productivity. He personally filed lawsuits against the regulations a month after their passage, claiming that the government had no right to regulate artificial increases in well pressure. The court case continued until 1896, when the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the regulations were unconstitutional. The entire set of regulations was repealed, including the anti-waste measures. The gross waste continued among other companies and the field's wells began to run dry by 1905—modern experts estimate as much as 90% of the one trillion cubic feet (30 km3) of natural gas in the field was lost into the atmosphere or misused.