By Staff
London-based BP's Whiting, Ind., oil refinery is swinging the pendulum back the other way with plans to empty more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan.
Thanks, Indiana regulators, for exempting BP from state environmental laws in the name of a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow heavier Canadian crude oil to be refined.
This move countering years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes was justified by the creation of 80 new jobs.
A rarely invoked state law trumps anti-pollution rules if a company comes across with "important social or economic benefits."
I remember where I was when I first heard this unbelievable news.
I was standing by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presidential candidate, in the back of the Lake Michigan College Mendel Center July 23 when he was asked for a reaction to this ominous development by a television reporter.
BP was already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes.
Now, under its new Indiana water permit, BP can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day.
The chief of the water permits section at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management defended the controversial decision by saying that since BP wanted to pump twice as much ammonia into the lake, "We ratcheted it down quite a bit from what it could have been."
Ammonia promotes fish-killing algae blooms. Sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.
We're supposed to feel better that the refinery will still meet federal water pollution guidelines, though U.S. and state officials have acknowledged this marks the first time in years that a company has been allowed to dump more toxic waste in Lake Michigan.
Ironically, BP aggressively markets itself as an environmentally friendly corporation.
I appreciate that it is investing heavily in Canadian crude to ease our reliance on Middle Eastern oil, and that extracting petroleum is a dirtier process. It also requires more energy and could significantly hike greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
The nation's fourth-largest refinery in Whiting sits on the lakeshore about three miles southeast of the Illinois-Indiana border.
Seems that if BP can afford $3.8 billion, it can also afford to protect the lake. Regulators determined, however, that there isn't enough room at the 1,400-acre site to expand the water treatment plant, so the company will be allowed to dump an average of 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of sludge every day into Lake Michigan, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The additional sludge is the maximum allowed under federal guidelines.
The refinery was built in 1989 by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co.
It can process more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
Total production is expected to grow by 15 percent by 2011, when the expansion project is completed.
You've got greenways and parks lining Lake Michigan in Chicago, but my grandma lived in Hammond, and I remember as a kid passing all the areas blighted by the largely unchecked steady flow of oil, grease and chemicals from steel mills, refineries and factories.
It garnered national attention that prodded Congress to pass the Clean Water Act in the early 1970s.
That would be the Clean Water Act with a provision prohibiting any downgrade in water quality near a pollution source even if discharge limits are met.
How are they circumventing that rule? Regulators are letting BP install equipment that mixes its toxic waste with clean lake water 200 feet offshore.
Actively diluting pollution by creating a mixing zone is banned in Lake Michigan under Indiana law, but regulators granted BP the first-ever exemption.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), meanwhile, has been pushing to eliminate mixing zones around the Great Lakes as threats to humans, fish and wildlife.
Yet EPA officials curiously did not object to Indiana's decision, agreeing with the state that BP's project would not damage the environment.
Federal officials also did not step in when Indiana gave BP another exemption that enables it to boost water pollution so long as the total amount of wastewater doesn't change. BP stated its flow into Lake Michigan will stay about 21 million gallons a day.
I don't know about you, but I've had just about all the shortsighted trade-offs I can take in one lifetime from the Bush administration.
E-mailed reactions have been universally negative with the possible exception of Kay Nelson, environmental director of the Northwest Indiana Forum, an economic development organization. She hailed the company as a model for others to follow. A BP executive sits on her board.
Our congressman, U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, who grew up on Lake Michigan in St. Joseph, has entered the fray, calling Aug. 10 on BP Chairman and President Robert A. Malone, 200 Westlake Park Blvd., Houston, TX 77079, for "increased dialogue in the quest to prevent the increasing of discharge dumping into Lake Michigan."
Upton wrote of the "very negative public reaction. I have not been to a single event in the western region of my district where someone has not asked me what I am doing to stop the discharge."
On Sept. 10 Upton discussed the matter with U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and EPA Region V Administrator Mary Gade while they were in the 6th District on an unrelated matter.
Upton also spoke to Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels to express his "grave concern."
Upton "strongly urged him to discontinue this dangerous course of action."
On July 25, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted Concurrent Resolution 187 by a vote of 387-26 that expressed the sense of Congress' disapproval "of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's issuance of a permit allowing BP to increase their daily dumping of ammonia and total suspended solids (TSS) into Lake Michigan" and stated that the EPA "should not allow increased dumping of chemicals and pollutants into the Great Lakes."
Berrien County Board of Commissioners voted 10-3 Aug. 9 against BP's oil refinery expansion,
Go fish: Florida gives its 92,000 prison inmates playing cards depicting dozens of cold cases detectives are trying to solve. Polk County adapted the idea in 2005 from the most-wanted deck picturing Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi fugitives issued to U.S. troops after the 2003 invasion.
27.1: Percent of 590,750 U.S. bridges with structural deficiencies, estimates the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave the country a D report card in 2005.
This just in from last August: President Bush, 61, was treated for Lyme disease, a tick-borne infection, a year ago, the White House disclosed Aug. 8.