Pennsylvania Finally Reveals Fracking Has Contaminated Drinking Water Hundreds Of Times

[Octafish]

16. BP gets to dump unknown quantities of mercury into Lake Michigan each year.

From there it goes into the fish and people of the area.

BP is polluting Lake Michigan

BP, stop discharging toxic mercury into our water supply

Chicago Tribune, July 01, 2013

BP, one of the world's biggest companies, dumps nearly 20 times more toxic mercury into Lake Michigan than federal regulations permit.

This has been known for years, but BP still gets away with it. How? Ask the people of Indiana.

In 2007, a Chicago Tribune investigation documented that Indiana allowed the massive BP refinery in Whiting to increase the amount of pollutants it released into the lake water that's used by millions of people for drinking, fishing and recreation. Permitting the oil company to dump high levels of mercury, ammonia and suspended solids helped to clear the way for a big expansion of the refinery.

When the Tribune exposed the excessive polluting of Lake Michigan, environmental groups gathered 100,000 petition signatures seeking to stop the practice. The Illinois congressional delegation — which then included Sen. Barack Obama and Rep. Rahm Emanuel — went on the warpath.

BP backed down. The company agreed to abide by stricter limits on ammonia, which promotes algae blooms that kill fish, and suspended solids, bits of refinery sludge that contain heavy metals.

But Indiana environmental regulators exempted the refinery from complying with the federal mercury standard of 1.3 parts per trillion while BP worked on technology to scrub its waste of that pollutant. Indiana allows the company to discharge an average of 23.1 parts per trillion.

That exemption was supposed to expire in 2012. But Indiana extended it once and, as the Tribune's Michael Hawthorne recently reported, Indiana regulators want to give BP an indefinite pass on mercury restrictions.

This cannot stand. Indiana regulators have compromised Lake Michigan water quality to accommodate the company.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-07-01/opinion/ct-edit-bp-20130701_1_indiana-regulators-mercury-refinery

Not to be cynical, but that's the same BP that polluted the entire Gulf of Mexico. Indiana has a tiny coastline along Lake Michigan and it's polluting more freshwater shore than California's seacoast.