A Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement under the Clean Water Act was written in 1972 to set a cap on the amount of crud that could be dumped into Lake Michigan annually. The law set a limit on how much pollution companies could legally dump into the lake. The law also prevented any company that was dumping under the limit from increasing their dumped pollution.

Well, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently made an exception to this law for the $3.8 billion expansion of British Petroleum’s (BP’s) Whiting, Indiana plant. In exchange, the expansion is said to provide 80 more permanent jobs and 2,000 temporary construction jobs. The trade-off for this socio-economical exchange is 35% more sludge (a total of 4,925 pounds), and 54% more ammonia (a total of 1,584 pounds) pumped into Lake Michigan daily. Even though this increase in pollution is still below the federal and state limits, it is the first decision in years that allows a company to dump more toxic waste into Lake Michigan.
For a company that considers themselves "Beyond Petroleum" by supporting alternative energy development and environmental protection, they certainly are not displaying much attention beyond their own petroleum processing?

This Whiting, Indiana plant (currently the nation’s 4th largest refinery) was originally built in 1889 by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. We are happy that they are using the same facility, but due to the extra crude oil coming from Canada, BP can’t process the expanded volume in the same "small" plant. Therefore, the expansion became the obvious solution. The state excused this severe hike in pollution by saying the project will provide more jobs and security of oil suppliers to the Midwestern United States.

This is what the trade-off actually is: this "toxic sludge" is a cocktail of concentrated heavy metals and suspended solids that does not-so-nicely mix with our fresh-water swimming lakes. The ammonia becomes a problem when it provides a habitat for healthy algae bloom, thus killing the native fish, and altering the aquaculture of the fresh water.

Since the public announcement of the EPA permit grant in mid-June, people are also unhappy with the way these events rolled out. An environmental group, the Alliance for the Great Lakes, filed a petition asking Indiana’s Office of Environmental Adjudication to suspend the permit and reopen the appeal process due to inadequate public scrutiny. When the permit draft was made available for review, many organizations submitted comments on it. Yet, when the final permit was made available, these organizations were not informed on the proper date, nor were they informed of the appeal process. Now the Indiana Department of Environmental Management claims that the appeal process is closed because it is 15 days past the post date of the final permit. Over 70,000 people across the Great Lakes and the nation have signed this petition.

Additionally, Great Lakes supporters spread out over BP stations all over the Midwest region handing out flyers explaining the situation and requesting that customers fill up elsewhere. As this momentum builds, awareness speads, and hopefully BP will either change their ways or admit that they are beyond caring about the Great Lakes. We prefer the former to the later.

To sign the petition yourself go to:
Environment Michigan