The rebranded to BP to get the public to forget their polluting ways under the old moniker British Petroleum. Name a brand changes, although everything else has stayed the same.

what bugs me is the fact city and state resources have to go to fight what should be a federally protected right to clean drinking water for future generations - we know better that we did in the 60's -- water can only take so much of this crap. the feds should be going after bp. not daley.

i'm a michigander, and i seem to remember a few weeks ago that there was a real outcry about this in the u.s. house. i'm not sure if a resolution was passed, but would be worth looking into. my dad wrote bp a letter and got a response something to the effect that environmental restrictions are why a new oil refinery hasn't been built in this country in the last 20 years and that's why oil prices continue to rise. yes, but is it worth screwing up the water quality of a huge reserve of freshwater reserve?

i know i'm naive and idealistic and a little stupid in some ways, but i'm amazed that this dumping is even being considered seriously.

cheaper gas or clean water, make the choice amerika.

the trouble with petitioning to "not buy bp gas" is that you might unwittingly buy it from another station anyhow. due to the logistics of the oil industry, you could stop into a shell station, for example, and actually be buying gas from bp.

and i wondered why there were people blowing up BP gas stations when i was in england during the summer of 2005...

Does anyone have a link to how many tons it puts out daily already? is an additonal 3 tons alot or alittle?

naperville is no where near lake michigan.

apparently, at least according to the wastewater treatment people at bp in whiting the water is actually cleaner after it leaves the refinery.

Imagine that...Dumping toxic waste into the last remaining clean (and largest) body of fresh water on earth. Why cant this muck be dumped into trucks and hauled off site to some landfill?
Bit of trivia...Lake Michigan is fed entirely by rainwater (and melting glaciers).

Vado....naperville gets it's drinking water from Lake Michigan...and yes, no where near Chicago, thanks to a huge pipeline. Perhaps cutting them off would offset the dumping by mere dilution.

previously in the news. thanks for the update, TED. I'll forward the petition to my family in Chicago and Madison.

i wondered what kind of treatment might be going on. this would be interesting to understand prior to any knee-jerk reactions (like mine) to the release of this 'wastewater'.

the trick would be figuring out from whom you could get a relatively non-partisan answer about the quality of the water released. certainly not from bp or our epa. an independent testing firm possibly? paid by whom?

i'd guess that more pollutants enter chicagoland from all the commuters driving to and from naperville everyday.

Thus perpetuating the need for more Fuel....
Headline: NaperVillans Collectively Drain and Pollute Lake Through Thirst For Gas and Drinking Water.

it used to be a small town now its 250k of suburban sprawlicious amerikan lifestyle.

Who drive everywhere

in their gas guzzlin suv's!

...to and from their tract homes built in once cornfields.
The new crop, Sprawling Vinyl-Sided Homes.
I'd like to know how much corn crops have been displaced and how much alternative fuel could have been produced from them, and the amount of oil these people actually consume commuting, returning home to drink and Bathe in OUR lake water! Amazing to think all of this sprawl is occurring with a birth / replacement rate of less than 1:1...

A side note....I have an SUV that gets 24.2 MPG which is parked 6 of 7 days per week, and driven less than 2000 miles a year....Not all SUV owners are oblivious/guilty/contributing ;)

yeah and they are trying to take jobs away from hardworking indianastanians!

Damn Brits! First they got us to support the Sha(?) in Iran and now lake Michigan? When will BP's reign of terror end???

dump it in Gary

But on a serious note I would be interested to see how this waste is treated. There are measures BP can take to get suspended solids out of the water and I'm sure there are ways to lower the ammonia count as well to "safe" levels. Environmental restrictions in the U.S. are very strict compared to many other, mostly developing nations and I'd be suprised they'd let BP dump toxic waste into lake Michigan. I'd like to see what actions BP is taking to treat the waste to comply with U.S. law before running around yelling.

Did y'all not see the part about the 80 permanent jobs this is going to create? Just think of how many tax dollars that will create to go towards building more bombs to blow up other countries. Manifest Destiny baby!!!

i almost feel like starting a trolling flame war with a pro-BP, pro-industry alt just to piss off all you nice liberal environmentalists, almost.

I'm the ultimate kind of environmentalist, the "let's destroy everything and start over" type. Human beings are an infection on this beautiful rock.

heres some info from NationalPetroleumRadio

thanks for the link vado, i figured they weren't dumping stuff like this in the lake

all this for only 80 jobs?

more refineries would help our economy, and i'm sure there are ways to refine oil and reduce the amount of pollutants pumped into the environment from said process.

Boycotting a BP retail gas station over their environmental record will have the same effect that boycotting all retail gas stations for one day has on prices....<b>None!</i>

While the refinery is owned by BP, they sell their product to all retail outlets. The only difference between BP branded gasoline and everybody else is the added detergents. Handing out phamplets at a retail outlet and convincing people to drive elsewhere is actually worse for the environment. Now those morally offended customers will turn around their SUV's and drive further, wasting more gasoline, emmiting more CO2 and purchasing the same product from the same refinery. Shit like that pisses me off about how stupid the environmental activism in this country is. Do your fucking research and find a more effective way to get your message across. (Same goes for the anti-war activism IMO)

Secondly, BP is expanding their refinery because people are consuming more petroleum. Maybe the environmental approach should be more about consuming less oil so the expansion wasn't necessary. I'm sure BP wouldn't spend 3.8 BILLION if there wasn't a profit in it for them.

actually i am doing my research - thats what my phd is about -- if it cost them 10 billion to make a refinery that does not destroy yet another natural resourse then they should spend it and charge us all for the real cost of keeping the environment clean, maybe that means $10 / gal -- so be it - then you'll see a reduction in consumption. but dont compromise drinking water.

bp of any of the oil companies, has made a committement to 'cleaner technologies' including agreeing not to drill in the artic region. they are a company that is aware of there actions reflect their committement to a better world [even if its all marketing].

so i am certain aquapura your not proposing just to dump crap in lake michigan which is drinking water for millions - what do you propose beside dis'n me?

I think TED aqua, and even myself, get agitated with environmentalist activism because its often misguided and its erroneous in its assumptions about how the world works.

I speak for myself here, but i've spent considerable time in mines and heavy industry operations and there is alot of waste. However many large, multinational companies, either through government regs, market forces, or just plain old good samaritanism try to keep the impact of these operations to a minimum. There are bad examples all the time, Dow chemical being one of them, but there are many companies who try to get us the base materials we need to support civilization while not destroying the environment to get them because dead kids and class-action lawsuits are bad for business.

and they build ugly shit like this...

better than alot of gas stations, still ugly though.

I think we still think of environmental activists as dirty hippies, though now we think of those trying to invest in "the green technology boom" as entrepreneurs. And I think we're all fed up with the hippies.

But I am also fed up with the "rich kid with the ball" where BP esentially says (and the current administration goes right along with) "If I can't pollute as much as I want to, I'll go build it where they don't care about poisoning their constituents / I just won't build it. Nyah!" Either you can afford to do it right, or don't do it. Don't give yourself a million dollar bonus so I can drink 53% more ammonia everyday.

Plus, wouldn't you need more jobs to monitor and perform the increased cleaning that you should be doing? Hmm - why don't the officials think of that, eh?

here's what BPsez

sounds legit to me

my older brother works for environmental action, the national component of Environment Illinois and worked extensively on this BP campaign...check out their site--they do a lot of good work, environmentally based of course, but much of it is in a political context. standing up to the biggies at BP has made him pretty damn stoked. check them out:

http://www.environmental-action.org/

what a bunch of relativists!

oh, it's just ammonia and "total suspended solids." nothing to worry about. are you the same people that believe the press releases of the bush empire? that ammonia amounts to 1,500 lbs/day. ammonia is responsible for huge algae blooms that affect water quality and hurt natural ecosystems. high levels of mercury are included in those "total suspended solids." you know the same mercury that leads to birth defects. and it's going into our drinking water. people around here will rail against the evil automobile, but when it comes to doing something about it the response is pretty flaccid.

jafidler, i believe it because i've worked for an environmental department in a similar organization (mining company), and spent a considerable portion of my life living in a mining community. We weren't killing kids or poisoning the environment, and we were disposing of materials that many environmentalists see as harmful because they don't care to understand beyond what they read in their own press blurbs. We treated said waste until you could drink from it (after you let the particulates settle) and then dumped it into the deepest trench we could find. 90% of that waste was water, 9.999% was crushed rock (suspended solids) and trace amounts of organic chemicals. This was in indonesia, a country with fewer environmental restrictions than the U.S. Ammonia exists in trace amounts naturally anyway. If the EPA says its good, and the State EPA says its good, then its probably good. These companies exist to make a profit, but its damn hard to make a profit when you have dead kids and class action lawsuits on your hands plus its bad publicity. If you wanna raise hell about shoddy environmental processes, talk to the mom and pop gold miners dumping heavy quantities of mercury into the Amazon.

the epa sez that 880 pounds of mercury end up in lake michigan every year from air pollution, primarily coal fired power plants near the lake.

and another pressure on the lake is, yes increasing water usage. another precious commodity that is too often wasted by people.

you have to take these issues on as they come up. capitalize on the media attention brought about by senators and environmentalists posturing. i have no doubt that there are plenty of companies doing far worse than what bp is about to do to lake michigan, but that still doesn't make it right. plenty of companies are doing bad things, but when there's an opportunity to speak up and do something about one of them, it's an opporunity worth taking.

maybe we should throw a "Protect the Lake" punch party for the states on its banks.



Oh im being an ass again, but seriously, these are the prices we pay for civilization, our best bet is to try for sustainablity. It seems like BP is trying for that, as much as building an oil refinery near a lake can be.

oh, and sustainability in the above post needs to be in " ".

TED - I wasn't trying to diss you, unless you were the one handing out the leaflets at BP retail outlets. That's what I thought was stupid and a complete mis-informed waste of time.

Of course I don't think BP should have free reign to dump toxins into Lake Michigan, or any body of water for that matter. I also would pay a higher retail price for a cleaner refinery.

My real complaint about the environmental movement is they don't propose any solutions. Yes, the oil companies pollute, well, what's your solution other than to protest the refinery expansion? I already suggested a campaign to educated people and get them to consume less. However, I never see solutions, just protest and complaints. I realize they are passionate, but not effective.

you raise an interesting question, aqua: what role can activism have in changing the practices of large multinational corporations?

i'm not sure why passing out pamphlets seems so ineffective to you. the one thing that activism can do is raise awareness. letting consumers know there is a consequence to the simple act of buying gas, i believe, is just the form of education that you seemed to be advocating for later in your post. larger change starts first with an awareness of a situation and then gradually changing the little mundane habits of our everyday life. calling activists "dirty hippies," not saying you said this, but it's been in the tone of a lot of these recent posts, is only counterproductive as it seems you have many of the same aspirations as the activists.