BP promised today to consider alternative plans for expanding its Indiana refinery after Illinois' lawmakers vowed to block the company's plan over concerns about pollutants the plant would discharge into Lake Michigan.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters after a meeting with BP officials that the company would review its approach to water treatment at the Whiting refinery and report to lawmakers in September. The president of BP's America unit, Robert Malone, also promised to address potential air pollution concerns, the senator said.
"We all want cheap gas," Durbin said. "But if it's at the expense of the safety of the water that we drink, that is unacceptable. It's your money or your life and that's an unacceptable choice here." About 30 million people drink Lake Michigan water.
The planned $3.8 billion refinery expansion would allow BP to refine Canadian crude, which is heavier and demands more energy for refining than other crude. The project would increase the refinery's fuel production by 15 percent, which translates to about 1.7 million additional gallons of gasoline and diesel per day, BP spokesman Scott Dean said. The Whiting refinery currently produces about 4.5 billion gallons of fuels each year.
Indiana issued a state water permit that would allow the refinery to discharge 54 percent more ammonia, as much as 1,584 pounds, and 35 percent more suspended solids, up to 4,925 pounds, into Lake Michigan every day. The permit is the first in years that allows an increased pollution discharge into the lake.
Dean said the permit was crafted to minimize environmental harm. All sludge would be treated and not discharged into Lake Michigan, Dean said. "We have not proposed the dumping of toxic waste or sludge," he said in a telephone interview.
Environmentalists have protested the permit, asking that BP install more effective pollution controls. But state and federal regulators backed the company, saying the 1,400-acre site is not large enough to upgrade the refinery's water treatment plant (Greenwire, July 17).
Reps. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) introduced a resolution expressing congressional disapproval of the plan. It is scheduled for a recorded vote later today.
Advertisement
