British Petroleum/Amoco seeks to dump more pollutants into Lake Michigan near beaches

As first reported in this Chicago Tribune story, British Petroleum is planning to dump 54% more ammonia and 35% more sludge into Lake Michigan from their oil refinery in Whiting, Ind. Hold on, MORE ammonia and sludge? How is it legal to dump any sludge and ammonia into a public lake, in particular somewhere so close to a major metro area. See this Google map to see the location of the refinery and nearby beaches.

Indiana regulators justify giving BP permission to dump more toxins into the lake because it'll supposedly create 80 more jobs. Even if the moral cause of protecting the environment is left out as an argument, from a purely economic standpoint this makes no sense. How does 80 additional jobs compare with the additional health costs from people eating contaminated fish, swimming and drinking from the contaminated water? How about the lost tourist revenue due to people understandably being concerned about swimming in nearby beaches? Of course these are costs that will be born by the hundreds of thousands living along the lake and not easily traceable back to British Petroleum.

Remember this next time one of those British Petroleum "Beyond Petroleum" ads runs.

What can be done:

• This story reports on a petition drive being launched in Chicago. You can join up, and let me know via a comment if you find out more about this drive.
• You can follow this link to lodge a complaint with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
• Sign this online petition to Indiana Governor Daniels.
• Tell BP what you think about BP and the environment via this form
• Support the "Bad Polluters Act" - H.R. 3276 (are there good polluters?) sponsored by Mark Kirk(R), Melissa Bean(D), Jesse Jackson(D) and others. Contact Mark Kirk or your representative to encourage them to support this.

Have other actions on this topic? Let us know with a comment on this blog.