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Indiana Allows BP To Pollute Lake Michigan
An anonymous reader writes "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. 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."
We already can eat only a limited amount of fish that come from the Great Lakes, how about we just dump more heavy metals into the lakes. Garg.
It is very frustrating that the federal government refuses to do things to protect the Great Lakes. Heck, they even refuse to stop ships from wherever from coming in and dumping bilge water contaminated with all sorts of invasive species into the lakes. These resources must be protected.
Look at what invasive species such as the emerald ash borer have done to MI and other surrounding states. When we people learn?
-Andrew
Well I live in Indiana, a state that has seen a lot of industrial job lost due to NAFTA and a general decline in U.S. auto manufacturing. So the state is doing everything possible to get jobs backs. Unfortunately, they are doing it at the cost of the environment. This is what happens when we open markets and start competing with 3rd world countries. We have to relax our standards so that we can win contracts from multinationals. The only winners are the corporations.
this is a red state people, they care about money, jesus, nascar and guns here; Mitch Daniels (current governor) is almost certainly behind this as he has been behind every other major retarded deal to net himself favor and money with the rich assholes here (aka selling out all our toll roads to foreign companies and contracting ot build new ones which they will own forever after paying some fee).
this doesn't surprise in teh least, he's also behind the attempts to mirror new york's city wide smoking bans on virtually everything (hint: we have a fuck of a lot of smokers here, probably more than average, no i'm not one of them however i'm surprised that in a republican state where republicans are supposedly for less gov't involvement in everything shit like this flies every time)
he's pro-roadblock checkpoints etc etc
life in naptown sucks, anyone whose not from here is always trying to go back home and most of hte (smart?) people from here leave or try to (they're always bitching about the "brain drain" here, they actually think this will be some tech mecca and have been trying to cement that position for awhile now, HELLO Chicago ain't that far, but they dont' care)
in addition to these they make no effort to keep the large manufacturing jobs open etc, and tout a handful of high level investment jobs as some massive coup that will save us all while thousands of people here get laid off who dont' have a degree and healthcare is virtually unavailable and gas prices continue to skyrocket well over national averages (which Daniel's shot down an investigation into, ps this is one of the only states in teh nation that had actual sanctions against gas stations post 9/11 because on that day some stations were selling gas at $5-7/gal for panic profit - while I'm sure GWB would approve some angry people somewhere did not.)
this country sucks worse every day and this city (indianapolis) and the state are focused, concentrated microcosm.
As a former resident of the area I am outraged!
Yes our drinking water comes from Lake Michigan and northwest Indiana is where all the oil and steel refineries who have been heavily polluting the lake beyond recovery for years. Chicago is very close and less than an hour a way. This will certainly wreck the fishing, tourism, and health for millions of people.
I was thinking of going on vacation to great dunes national park in Indiana next summer which has great beaches on the lake. Now I think I will pass as I doubt anything will be left alive over there or least I do not want to swim in it. This pisses me off and I hope Chicago goes without water for a few months as they try to find a different source of drinking water just to make enough people outraged at whats going on. Why is this legal?
http://saveie6.com/
...and local government in the state of Indiana isn't one of them.
This is ridiculous. A $3.8 billion expansion and they can't afford to clean up the mess that they're creating?
At which point will the Indiana legislators start realising that their duty is to all the people of Indiana, not just the few that work for BP?
I bet if you asked people if they would want their laws bent or even waived to allow a polluter to pollute their water even more that 99 percent of them would say no. So how the hell does the Indiana Department of Environmental Management have the balls to try to justify and defend their decision?
What's next? Indiana cops giving drug dealers the green light to push crack in schools?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I think we're all forgetting that BP just re-branded themselves. Now their logo is a little green and yellow sunflower, they have pictures of plants and glaciers on their website, and they run commercials featuring environmentally conscious gen X folks. This obviously means BP cares about the environment. They're most likely dumping 4,925 pounds of organic compost into Lake Michigan every day.
Are we supposed to assume BP's re-branding was a big PR stunt to make the public think they care about the environment? Phhs, No. If there is one thing I've learned, it's that energy company always have the best of intentions, even when they're shooting protesters from helicopter... shooting them with love.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
In the long term, this will create more than 80 jobs by the time the lake becomes a giant superfund site (Hazmat jobs pay good money!). Of course, people may die from the pollution but that will only improve the jobless rate as well. Wildlife doesn't vote or contribute, so who cares if wildlife dies? C'mon, government only thinks of the long-term benefit for the people. Right?
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Left up to the blue state environmental types, the USA would have no jobs at all. We'd all be selling beads to each other, until they banned glass blowing because it was too dangerous.
But, let's ask ourselves? How many cubic miles of trash come out of NYC? How much recycling really goes on in Boston? Where's the big green farms in Trenton, NJ? Does the city of Philadelphia even make enough biofuels for its own cars?
It's really easy to live in a city and decry everyone else's environmental practices but cities are the filthiest places on the planet, and yet, in the United States, they produce no food, no manufactured goods, nothing but a bunch of lawyers pushing lawsuits back and forth and selling insurance to each other. Yeah, that's some economy.
Red staters might be polluters, but at least they aren't useless.
This is my sig.
You make an excellent point however, turning it into a marketable product or at least partnering with someone who will would cost them a bit more than dumping, but make more sense from an environmental standpoint.
Despite BP marketing and rebranding as a "green" company this shows all they are interested in. I understand companies are in business to make money, but don't lie to us telling me you care about the environment and then slap us in the face like this.
Cleaning completely is not possible. There may be one or three people on the entire Slashdot, who know, what can and can not be done with this waste... The rest are just venting.
The article's numbers are weird. They assert, the amount of "industrial sludge" will increase by 35% (non-toxic ammonia by even more), but the refinery's output — by only 15%.
It would seem, they are better of allowing another refinery — just like the existing one — it would double the pollution, but also double the output...
I think, the problem comes from the switch to heavy oil, which largely comes from friendly Canada is much harder to process (although companies like Ivanhoe are coming up with revolutionary methods).
We all want "energy independence", but the sales of big SUVs are only growing.
Financing unwholesome governments and terrorism abroad, or polluting your own lakes (or air, if you add ethanol to your fuel). Make your choice...
There is hope — if the Republican candidates agreed with each other on anything during their most recent TV-debate, it was that we need to build (much) more nuclear stations. That should ease the strain considerably...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If you're lucky, that gets you maybe ten new police officers. And something tells me it's going to cost more than $615K to clean up the crap being spilled in lake each year. Hell, the legal fees fighting off the complaints from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan -- the other three states that share the lake -- could easily be ten times that.
All in all, a dumbass move that makes absolutely no sense for the state whatsoever. I wonder who got bribed, and with how much?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
TFA says:
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.It's a pretty lame argument, but I guess that they don't have enough space to put an ammonia purification plant either.
Don't be silly. The current politicians aren't worried in the least about this issue. By the time cleanup becomes a concern for them, they'll all have different jobs.
We all want "energy independence", but the sales of big SUVs are only growing.
The linked article is a load of crock. For instance:
The bigger the guzzler, the better the numbers. Sales of GMC's Yukon XL were up a whopping 72 percent last month, and the totals for its Chevrolet sister, the Suburban, rose 38 percent. Topping off the tank on either one can cost as much as $120.
They costs so much to fill up because they have a 31 gallon fuel tank. That has no direct relation on gas-guzzler status. Its stated mpg is 15/21. Not fantastic, but not a gas-guzzler, either. It's also not particularly worse than the minivans that were popular family cars before the SUV.
Not a typewriter
> Unless the voters decide they like the lake, then its time to flip flop the other way... Live life by the polls, just like Billery.
It isn't completely wrong to do so - if the voters decide after you get into office that they prefer you to do x - you may to allow that knowledge to override what you'd personally prefer.
I guess you could call that flipflopping - but that's a hell of a lot better than the morons we've got in the administration that will follow their dumbass wing-nut ideas straight in the toilet - no matter what the rest of the nation tells them.
One more point, you don't need to reach back to Bill Clinton for examples of politicians that are affected by the polls: Bush and his administration carefully monitor the polls - since they know that the better they are doing in the polls the more leverage they've got. This goes all the way to insisting that the Surgeon General mention the president three times on each page of a speech!
This pollution may be just fine and dandy with Indiana, but what about the other states that border the Great Lakes? I live in Michigan and I don't want to see Lake Michigan become like Lake Erie once was...
You haven't been paying attention. That strong superstructure is now outside of the US. They are called *multi*-national corporations for a reason. If you sacrifice your ecosystems in the US, it no longer helps just the US. It helps everyone in the world who owns stock in the companies. A Spaniard owning stock in BP isn't going to be crying that stupid legislators in Indiana are destroying their ecosystem so he can get more profit. Destroying an ecosystem is only a viable strategy for national growth if your companies are all private.
What's next? Indiana cops giving drug dealers the green light to push crack in schools?
If there was a big enough crack lobby, it would be sold in a vending machine next to the school cafeteria.
I came here for a good argument
I bet if you asked people if they would want their laws bent or even waived to allow a polluter to pollute their water even more that 99 percent of them would say no. So how the hell does the Indiana Department of Environmental Management have the balls to try to justify and defend their decision?
They dont have balls, thats why they let it happen in the first place. Corporate America has taken the testicles of the politicians and got them in a vice like grip.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Big enough would be have to be really big though, because the tobacco lobby pushes hard against anything that's more addictive than nicotine.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re: global warming, book review for ya: Under a Green Sky
Seriously, the ammonia from fish poop in the lake is several orders of magnitude higher. Plus, ammonia is taken up by algae anyway.
"...could you explain how building more nuclear reactors will reduce oil consumption?"
By powering electric cars and other PHEVs? Allowing the expansion of light rail? Allowing more homes to convert from fuel oil to electric heating? Providing the power needed to make hydrogen? Powering other conversion industries (ethanol, biodiesel, shale, etc.)
In short, you have to think about not just the power industry, but also about all of the things said industry could power...
"I think one of us is a little confused...."
Hope that helped end your confusion...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
So people here on /. are outraged. That's nothing new. What is anyone going to do about it? Write a letter to a congressman? The governor? Run for office to get things changed yourself? Drive less and carpool more?
If you fill up at a BP normally, will you stop doing that? Or will you do what's easier, more convenient?
I live in central Indiana, and I really don't like the idea of more waste being dumped in Lake Michigan. It's fould as it stands. I wouldn't go swimming in it unless I wanted a few layers of flesh stripped off and loss of ability to reproduce. I may write a letter (that will be looked over, glossed over, and discared by aides) to congressman, senators, and the governor. I probably won't. I'm under no illusions it will do any good. I'm not going to drive less. I don't really go many places other than work and I, sadly, can't quit my job yet. I walk to the grocery store, same as I've done for two years. And I won't stop filling up at BP either. It's directly on my way home from work. It's too convenient to not drive 2 blocks out of the way to put the same gas in my car, but at a "Speedway."
Other than bitch and moan, what is anyone here willing to do, to change in their own lives because of this? The answer is probably nothing.
As Kurt Vonnegut might have said, "So it goes."
Well said, and I would like to think that the EPA works as well in this case as it seems to have done at your plant.
Maybe you're thinking of a different EPA because the one I know of said the air was good to breath in NYC after 911. The head of the EPA then, Christine Todd Whitman said it was safe to breath although toxins were in the air. And exactly how many of the Superfund sites have been cleaned up?
FalconShould there be a Law?
...will I see lower gas prices due to this change?
It seems to me that with the cost of oil banging on $80-a-barrel's door, Venezuela driving out American oil interests, and with no truly efficient alternative in sight, we will have little choice but to enable more production State side. The downside to more production will always be more pollution, but the upside will theoretically be lower costs for oil and, consequently, gasoline.
I realize the green flag is a popular one to wave around here, but what are our real options? I hate to see natural resources contaminated, but I hate to pay such high gas prices, too.
I'm not saying pollution is a good thing, but unless there are viable alternatives to refined oil for energy we are going to see more of this sort of news in the future. Either except pollution as the fee we will pay for lower gas prices, or propose new energy sources. The demand for low cost fuel isn't going to wait for anybody, green or otherwise.
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
oh, there is a huge lobby, it started the war on drugs. Pushes the prices sky high...
You can't handle the truth.