Political Pollution: Feds 'Work' With BP Rather Than Bar Lake Michigan Dumping

The US Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging British Petroleum to do some feel-good spending to tamp down furor over planned contaminant dumping in Lake Michigan.

The EPA should have objected in the first place to Indiana's recent permission to BP that allows the oil giant to deposit three more tons daily of sludge and ammonia into Lake Michigan.

Suggesting some backing-and-filling to BP as a response to growing criticism across the Great Lakes region is little more than EPA pandering.

Its stance to this exceedingly wealthy company should have been: build onsite waste treatment facilities with your billions in annual profits: We are the Environmental Protection Agendy, not the Enabling Pollution Agency.

Mayor Richard Daley, Mayor Tom Barrett and a slew of others have joined most of the House of Representatives in objecting, and citizen petitions are giving way to boycotts.

But in Wisconsin, a Lake Michigan state: Continuing silence from our state officials.