Saturday, June 15, 2013

Indiana Allows BP To Dump Mercury Into Lake Michigan

The company's expanding tar sand crude oil refinery at Whiting, IN - - not far from Chicago - - is being allowed by state regulators to dump relatively larger amounts of mercury into Lake Michigan, the AP reports:

BP received permission from IDEM [the Indiana Department of Environmental Management] in late 2011 for the refinery to discharge an annual average of 23.1 parts per trillion of mercury — nearly 20 times the water quality standard for the Great Lakes. Such mercury variances are allowed under state law.

3 comments:

JB said...

I surprised this isn't covered under the Great Lakes Compact. Did all the signatories think that governmental bodies would be too honorable to permit this?

Shame on Indiana and on Mitch Daniels.

James Rowen said...

The Compact is about Great Lakes quantity and conservation, not water quality, per se.

Anonymous said...

Why does Waukesha want Lake Michigan water???