LANSING – State Representative Kate Ebli (D-Monroe) today announced that oil giant British Petroleum (BP) caved to legislative and public pressure and backed off from its plan to substantially increase the amount of pollution that its Whiting, Ind., refinery dumps into Lake Michigan.
"Many residents of Monroe County have come to me to express their concern about the toxic discharges threatening Lake Michigan, and I have vowed to do everything I can to safeguard our waters," Ebli said. "The Great Lakes help define our heritage here in Michigan, and they also play a vital role in our state's three largest industries – manufacturing, agriculture and tourism. BP made the right decision to meet its previous, lower discharge limits rather than pump thousands of more pounds of pollutants into Lake Michigan. But that does not mean we can rest in our fight to protect the Great Lakes – we must remain vigilant in protecting our most precious natural resource."
Ebli this week co-sponsored a House resolution calling on the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take action on the recent approval of a permit to increase pollution by BP into the Great Lakes.
On Thursday, BP issued a statement promising "to operate its Whiting refinery to meet the lower discharge limits contained in the refinery's previous wastewater treatment permit," admitting that public opposition caused the company to cancel its plans to increase dumping.
"It was important for the Michigan House to send out this resolution protesting the troubling development that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management had approved this permit to allow more industrial pollutants to be dumped into Lake Michigan," Ebli said. "Provisions in the federal Clean Water Act bar the degradation of water quality, and yet that did not stop the EPA from concurring with Indiana's decision. We sent a strong message by calling on Congress to step in."
In June, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, with approval from the EPA, issued a permit to allow the Whiting refinery to release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan. That would have meant an additional 1,500 pounds of ammonia and nearly 5,000 pounds of suspended solids would flow into Lake Michigan every day from its Whiting oil refinery.