Tar Sands, BP and Lake Michigan Pollution

I bring a mixed story to consider here. It's mixed, in that the United States and I suppose it's fair to say, Man in general, have two competing priorities. They don't have to be mutually exclusive ones, but they are coming to be more and more, particularly with selective and confusing enforcement of environmental law.

Energy and Clean Water.

When you imagine environmental law, you probably imagine the law is there to limit, hold steady or reduce levels of known pollution into beautiful bodies of water like the American Great Lakes. There aren't THAT many fresh water sources on our planet of real significant size, and another of the same ranking (Lake Victoria) is a body of water in various states of dying. It's not a good picture.

However, there are things we can look at to specifically say "Hey! Ummm!? What the HECK are you people thinking?!".

Do insure you're facing your applicable State House, or better yet, Washington, so those who cause the problem may hear people becoming aware of that fact.

It's caused by tolerance. It's caused by complacency and corruption. In this case, it flows from refineries on Lake Michigan, including one with something of a running controversy.

To take a quick look (it could go pages for time and depth), I'll start with this..in 2007.

As part of a $3 billion expansion of its Whiting, Ind., refinery, the nation's fourth largest, BP won permission to release more ammonia and suspended solids into the lake. Indiana regulators also gave BP until 2012 to meet a stringent federal standard for mercury pollution set by the EPA in 1995.

Even though the federal government has been pushing for more than three decades to eliminate pollution in the Great Lakes, the EPA did not object to the BP permit.

EPA backs BP dumping - Lake will get more pollution (August 2007)

Now I look at the date and I consider, people probably even blamed Bush for that. lol... In fact, the article even seems to suggest that. There is more though....hindsight is awkward at times, I'm sure.

Under the Clean Air Act, BP is required to manage and treat benzene waste from its wastewater treatment plant. But not all emissions from the waste were controlled as required.

In 2008, BP totaled 95 tons of benzene waste — nearly 16 times the amount allowed, according to the EPA. Similar violations took place between 2003 and 2008.

BP self-disclosed the violations to the EPA in a required annual report for 2008 submitted on Feb. 10 this year. BP spokesman Scott Dean said BP discovered the problem when a third party audited the treatment plant in the fall as part of an effort to improve operations

BP: 'We share concerns about benzene' (June 2009)

In considering the title of that, I think back to hearing almost word for word assurances in the Gulf blowout. That...didn't pan out so well, as I had watched at the time. We all saw how it worked out, actually.

How about more recently...?

Flash forward to last year.

We've gotten a handle on this source of misery to Lake Michigan by now, right? I mean, Mercury, at least? Errr.......

BP enlisted scientists at Argonne National Laboratory and the Purdue-Calumet Water Institute to come up with methods that company officials said could set a model for factories and sewage treatment plants throughout the Great Lakes region. But despite promising results from two options tested, a new draft permit from Indiana regulators allows BP to avoid installing the mercury-filtering equipment at the Whiting refinery.

Under the terms of an earlier decision by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the BP refinery can legally discharge an annual average of 23.1 parts per trillion of mercury — nearly 20 times the federal water quality standard for Great Lakes polluters. The proposed new permit would allow that special exemption to continue indefinitely.

Allowing BP to skirt environmental laws helped clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion of the Whiting refinery that, when completed later this year, will upgrade the nation's seventh-largest refinery to process heavy Canadian crude oil from the tar sands region of Alberta. Indiana regulators justified the move in part by stating that the project will create thousands of construction jobs and 80 new refinery jobs.

Indiana gives BP a pass on mercury (June 2013) (Emphasis Added)

Wow.. Yeah.. This place seems to have real luck. They keep having problem, getting extended to more and dodging true consequence while expanding operations. Quite a look at how some companies in some regions get treated compared to others. Overall, it's a scary statement in any light, IMO.

Less than 1% of known water is fresh and potable. Of allll that water out there...by volume, world wide, less than 1%. Within that small number are countless rivers, creeks and waterways that have pollution exceeding lethal levels right now. After all, that 1% includes some which whole threads could be written about in their own right.

So..within all this, and within that small amount..goes more goop?

A BP refinery has spilled an undetermined amount of crude oil into Lake Michigan in the US.

BP said a malfunction caused crude oil to enter the Whiting refinery's cooling water system, which discharges into the lake.

What makes this one of real interest, when the spill isn't so big in it's own right? Well... See above on a bit of a pattern here...and then, this:

A few weeks ago, BP announced plans to increase its processing of crude oil at the Whiting refinery, as more oil is sent down from tar sands in Canada.

BP refinery leaks oil into Lake Michigan near Chicago (March 2014)

Ahh.... Indeed. Another expansion! What could possibly go wrong? I can't imagine...can you?



* Additional Sourcing: National Wildlife Foundation Oil Incidents By State (PDF)

the Environmentalist have dropped the ball,,they are too busy worring about global warming and the Unknown effects of carbon dioxide,,the corporations have currupted the environmental movement and have them so concern about carbon dioxide that they forget about traditionally Known sources of Pollution. Now ,the top priority is about how the neighbors recycle bin not being seperated correctly effects the carbon footprint ,,,,not what corporations dump

the average person gets fined,,but too the corporations,, its just a big tax write off..

I do not get the logic here. Now all this pollution is the hated government institution EPA's fault? What about the corporations responsibility? The Supreme Court said they were people too. If I went around pouring poisonous chemicals in the rivers, what would they do to me? I would be tried as a terrorist.


Why do we americans blame the government, made up of people the same as corporations for everything!!!!???? But we just keep licking the shoes of corporations like the brainwashed slaves we are.

reply to post by MOMof3

Why do we americans blame the government, made up of people the same as corporations for everything!!!!????

But we just keep licking the shoes of corporations like the brainwashed slaves we are.

Oh, I'll be happy to blame the corporations. They'll have to start breaking the law, first.

We have a little problem. Actually it's a big one....it's just over 500 members strong with a big pointy white building on a hill in Washington. In some examples, like this one, whenever the law looks a little broken, the law is simply changed, waived or excepted so they aren't breaking it anymore.

We have Congressmen complaining ..but check out the stories and there are more going back years before those ....they are the SAME Congressmen. You'd think they'd stop promising accountability ...after a decade or more or babbling it..and actually DO something.

Now I don't vote for the Corp who follows the new legal/regulatory adjustments that allow it to go on. I DO vote for at least a couple of the fools tolerating it and watching the situations go on, for many years and across administrations, for it to not only continue but get worse.

That is why the Government is the blame here. They keep making it legal to break the spirit of the laws into a thousand pieces.

And once again nothing "we" can really do about it. The Corporation will maybe pay a large fine/bribe to the Gov't and continue business as usual.

There is a pattern of polluting there.

The list of rivers here in Michigan containing mercury and other pollutants at so high of levels that it is recommended not to eat the fish is ridiculously long.

Unless CEOs of the corporations start getting jail time for these abuses I guess we just plan another Love canal and say goodbye to the once Great Lakes.

The EPA really likes to pleasure BP while bending everyone else over and giving it to them without mercy.

I heard that BP will be back at the gulf drilling again soon. The EPA and the FDA are both on my list.

What you say and what I read are not the same info. I kept this from a while ago cause I knew we would pay. Not the corporations, but mothers that try to give healthy babies, animals, and plants that provide food for healthy babies.



EPA CUTSreply to post by Wrabbit2000

It's amazing what money can buy.

It's amazing what man's insatiable desire for money will have him turn a blind eye to, what he is willing to sacrifice.

S&F Wrabbit. Thanks for the info.