BP: the first company in years allowed to increase the amount of toxic chemicals pumped into the Great Lakes

EPA backs BP dumping | Lake will get more pollution

Rebuffing bipartisan pressure from members of Congress, the Bush administration's top environmental regulator on Tuesday declined to stop the BP refinery in northwest Indiana from dumping more pollution into Lake Michigan.

Stephen Johnson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he saw nothing wrong with the permit Indiana regulators awarded in June to BP, the first company in years allowed to increase the amount of toxic chemicals pumped into the Great Lakes.

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.
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Lawmakers and other critics question why the EPA is allowing BP to increase the amount of pollution it puts into the lake even as the agency addresses years of past contamination.

"Years of accelerated pollution from BP will create another problem in the future," said U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) "We need to prevent that."