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[Southsider2k12]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi...ll=chi-news-hed

BP gets break on dumping in lake
Refinery expansion entices Indiana

By Michael Hawthorne
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 15, 2007

The massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., is planning to dump significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan, running counter to years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.


Under BP's new state water permit, the refinery -- already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes -- can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.

The refinery will still meet federal water pollution guidelines. But federal and state officials acknowledge this marks the first time in years that a company has been allowed to dump more toxic waste into Lake Michigan.

BP, which aggressively markets itself as an environmentally friendly corporation, is investing heavily in Canadian crude oil to reduce its reliance on sources in the Middle East. Extracting petroleum from the thick goop is a dirtier process than conventional methods. It also requires more energy that could significantly increase greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Environmental groups and dozens of neighbors pleaded with BP to install more effective pollution controls at the nation's fourth-largest refinery, which rises above the lakeshore about 3 miles southeast of the Illinois-Indiana border.

"We're not necessarily opposed to this project," said Lee Botts, founder of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. "But if they are investing all of these billions, they surely can afford to spend some more to protect the lake."

State and federal regulators, though, agreed last month with the London-based company that there isn't enough room at the 1,400-acre site to upgrade the refinery's water treatment plant.

The company will now be allowed to dump an average of 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of sludge into Lake Michigan every day. The additional sludge is the maximum allowed under federal guidelines.

Company officials insisted they did everything they could to keep more pollution out of the lake.

"It's important for us to get our product to market with minimal environmental impact," said Tom Keilman, a BP spokesman. "We've taken a number of steps to improve our water treatment and meet our commitments to environmental stewardship."

BP can process more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil daily at the plant, which was built in 1889 by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co. Total production is expected to grow by 15 percent by the time the expansion project is finished in 2011.

In sharp contrast to the greenways and parks that line Lake Michigan in Chicago, a string of industrial behemoths lie along the heavily polluted southern shore just a few miles away. The steady flow of oil, grease and chemicals into the lake from steel mills, refineries and factories -- once largely unchecked -- drew national attention that helped prompt Congress to pass the Clean Water Act during the early 1970s.

Paul Higginbotham, chief of the water permits section at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, said that when BP broached the idea of expanding the refinery, it sought permission to pump twice as much ammonia into the lake. The state ended up allowing an amount more than the company currently discharges but less than federal or state limits.

He said regulators still are unsure about the ecological effects of the relatively new refining process BP plans to use. "We ratcheted it down quite a bit from what it could have been," Higginbotham said.

The request to dump more chemicals into the lake ran counter to a provision of the Clean Water Act that prohibits any downgrade in water quality near a pollution source even if discharge limits are met. To get around that rule, state regulators are allowing BP to install equipment that mixes its toxic waste with clean lake water about 200 feet offshore.

Actively diluting pollution this way by creating what is known as a mixing zone is banned in Lake Michigan under Indiana law. Regulators granted BP the first-ever exemption.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been pushing to eliminate mixing zones around the Great Lakes on the grounds that they threaten humans, fish and wildlife. Yet EPA officials did not object to Indiana's decision, agreeing with the state that BP's project would not harm the environment.

Federal officials also did not step in when the state granted BP another exemption that enables the company to increase water pollution as long as the total amount of wastewater doesn't change. BP said its flow into Lake Michigan will remain about 21 million gallons a day.

In response to public protests, state officials justified the additional pollution by concluding the project will create more jobs and "increase the diversity and security of oil supplies to the Midwestern United States." A rarely invoked state law trumps anti-pollution rules if a company offers "important social or economic benefits."

In the last four months, more than 40 people e-mailed comments to Indiana officials about BP's water permit. One of the few supportive messages came from Kay Nelson, environmental director of the Northwest Indiana Forum, an economic development organization that includes a BP executive among its board of directors. She hailed the company's discussions with state and community leaders as a model for others to follow.

Nearly all of the other comments, though, focused on the extra pollution in Lake Michigan.

"This is exactly the type of trade-off that we can no longer allow," wrote Shannon Sabel of West Lafayette, Ind. "Possible lower gas prices (I'll believe that when I see it!) against further contamination of our water is as shortsighted as it is irrational."

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mhawthorne@tribune.com

[Southsider2k12]

This might not be over...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-bp_...1,1735826.story

BP under gun to expand production, limit pollution

Officials contend that they still don't know how to keep levels of ammonia and solids routinely below the stricter limits they had pledged to follow

By Michael Hawthorne | Tribune staff reporter
November 19, 2007

Two thin streams of wastewater pour constantly from spigots used to monitor environmental conditions at the BP oil refinery in Whiting.

Joe Morrison, manager of the facility's water treatment plant, quickly fills two glass bottles to show the difference between viscous, unfiltered sewage from the massive petroleum complex and the discharge that ends up in Lake Michigan just across the Illinois border.

Globs of oil swirl through one bottle. The other looks ready for a convenience store shelf.

But even though the cleaner water has been skimmed with mechanical bars, saturated with oil-hungry microbes and filtered through vessels of sand, it still carries large amounts of microscopic pollution -- the toxic stuff you cannot see.

After the Tribune reported in July that the refinery planned to significantly increase its discharges of ammonia and suspended solids into the lake, BP officials bowed to intense public pressure and backed down. The company pledged to abide by the more stringent limits in its old water permit even as it undertakes a $3.8 billion expansion to process more heavy Canadian crude oil.

Yet during a tour last week of the sprawling lakefront refinery, built in 1889 by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co., officials said figuring out how to keep that promise is proving difficult.

"If there's a breakthrough out there, we don't know about it," said Dan Sajkowski, the refinery's manager. "We've literally looked at all of these proposed solutions and more. If there was an easy fix, don't you think we would have done that and saved ourselves from going through the past few months?"

Sajkowski said officials are actively reviewing dozens of potential strategies and cautioned that BP will scuttle the expansion project if solutions are not found. But signs that BP is still planning the overhaul are everywhere at the refinery, from video screens in the executive offices to the "Project Canadian Crude" labels painted on company vehicles winding through the maze of towers and pipes outside.

Improvements outlined

Some potential improvements are outlined in a report commissioned by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, one of several politicians who insisted that BP's original plans would not fly with the public. The report from Tetra Tech Inc., a leading engineering firm, concluded that other refineries around the nation already are using technologies that dramatically reduce ammonia and suspended solids, tiny sludge particles that escape water treatment filters.

For instance, a ConocoPhillips refinery in Borger, Texas, upgraded its wastewater tanks with equipment that promotes the growth of ammonia-stripping bacteria. Another ConocoPhillips refinery in Los Angeles relies on reverse osmosis, forcing wastewater through a membrane that curbs the amount of solids and other pollutants.

Tetra Tech estimated that BP could make similar upgrades at the Whiting refinery for less than $40 million, but company officials remain skeptical. They have hired their own consultants and enlisted Argonne National Laboratory and Purdue University to conduct more research.

Earlier this year, before Indiana regulators agreed to relax the refinery's pollution limits, dozens of neighbors pleaded with BP to install more effective pollution controls. Those concerns were rejected after state regulators concluded that the 80 new jobs created by the project would provide "important social or economic benefits."

"I understand that BP doesn't want to spend the money and is feeling quite defensive these days," said Howard Learner, executive director of the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center. "But they are going to have to do a much better job than they originally planned. The public doesn't want more pollution in Lake Michigan."

Environmental groups also want BP to make its promise legally binding by changing the permit, a step the company steadfastly refuses to take because it would require a new set of public hearings and comments.

The refinery is already the largest industrial source of ammonia dumped into Lake Michigan and one of the lake's largest overall polluters.

As it stands now, BP would not face penalties if the refinery put an average of 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of solids into the lake every day. The amount of solids is the maximum allowed under federal guidelines.

Company officials who operate the refinery's wastewater treatment plant insist that they likely would release less pollution than that.

They provided monitoring data that show the amount of solids discharged into the lake has dropped by 40 percent since 2003. However, they wanted more wiggle room in the permit to deal with an expected surge of toxic byproducts from refining heavy Canadian crude.

Breaking down, or "cracking," the thick goop into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel is a substantially dirtier process than what it takes to refine lighter grades of oil
BP initially sought permission to dump twice as much ammonia into Lake Michigan as was allowed under the old permit. Indiana regulators ended up giving the refinery approval to increase its ammonia discharges by 54 percent and suspended solids by 35 percent.

To limit the refinery's pollution to those levels, the company is improving equipment that strips out some of the ammonia before wastewater flows into the treatment plant. It also is adding another step in the treatment process to help filter tiny sludge particles.

But BP officials contend that they still do not know how to routinely keep levels of ammonia and solids below the more stringent limits required by the old permit.

The mercury menace
They repeated arguments that limited space along the lakefront -- the water treatment plant is sandwiched on a D-shaped peninsula between the lake and the refinery -- prevents them from making more aggressive improvements.

"It just isn't practical to engineer something else that would work effectively at this site," Morrison said from a grated walkway suspended above a giant clarification tank coated with sandy brown foam. The Chicago skyline rises above the horizon 15 miles away.

Closer by, just across a set of railroad tracks that separates the treatment plant from the refinery, workers are erecting a 10-million-gallon tank to hold storm runoff. The consultants hired by the City of Chicago suggested that this tank could be divided to make room for more treatment equipment, though BP officials aren't sure that would work.

Finding a solution is critical for BP. The Whiting refinery already is the nation's fourth largest, with the ability to process more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil a day at peak capacity, and production is expected to grow by 15 percent when the expansion project is finished in 2011.

Critics say excuses are weak

Critics note that it's common for industry to insist it cannot comply with tougher environmental regulations. Faced with deadlines and firm limits, though, companies usually find something that works.

Automakers once insisted that they could not comply with the Clean Air Act -- until they came up with the low-cost catalytic converter. Power companies claimed that they could not afford to reduce acid rain pollution, but today they tout programs that led to a sharp drop in emissions even as generation increased.

Oil refineries are some of the nation's biggest polluters, but BP and other companies aggressively market themselves as being environmentally friendly.

At one point during the tour of the Whiting refinery, plant officials proudly mentioned that they were among the first to mass-produce lead-free gasoline. The refinery also made large batches of low-sulfur diesel fuel to run Chicago Transit Authority buses years before federal rules required the cleaner fuel nationwide.

"They cut corners on this expansion project because they thought they could," said Ann Alexander, a Chicago-based attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Now that they've made this promise, the public is going to make sure they keep it."

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mhawthorne@tribune.com

IN THE WEB EDITION: Read past stories about pollution and the lake, and hear Tribune reporter Michael Hawthorne talk about the subject with Spike O'Dell at chicagotribune.com/bp.