By The Associated Press

BP could keep the pollution discharges at its Whiting refinery at current levels even after the plant’s $3.8 billion expansion by spending $40 million to add new technologies, a report suggests.

The city of Chicago commissioned Tetra Tech, a California-based engineering firm, to review the expansion project. Tetra Tech’s report concluded that BP could upgrade the refinery’s wastewater treatment plant for less than $40 million using technologies in use at other refineries to significantly cut the new plant’s discharges into Lake Michigan.

“We are confident that it can be done,” Joe Deal, an assistant to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, told The Indianapolis Star for a Tuesday story.

BP had faced growing public and political outrage over a new Indiana permit that allows the company to significantly boost the amount of pollutants dumped into the lake from the northwest Indiana refinery, which is the nation’s fourth-largest.

Last month, amid mounting pressure, BP said the refinery would stay within the limits set in its previous permit. But BP officials warned the decision could jeopardize the new construction because they said they didn’t know of technology that would allow for expansion without increasing discharges into the lake.

Deal and environmentalists who had opposed the IDEM permit said BP officials were presented with several options in the days before that announcement. “The information on technology we provided to BP is not exactly cutting-edge or emerging; it is in use now at other refineries,” Deal said. “We believe it can work at Whiting, too.”

BP spokeswoman Valerie Corr acknowledged that the company had been provided the report but said she could not comment on the recommendations. She noted that the company is giving the Purdue Calumet Water Institute and Argonne National Laboratory a $5 million grant to research technology that could reduce pollution at the refinery.

“Purdue and Argonne will take all of the ideas that come to us and look at new technology and get back to us,” she said.

In June, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management approved a new water permit that allows BP to increase ammonia discharges by 54 percent, to an average of 1,584 pounds a day, and suspended solid discharges by 35 percent, to 4,925 pounds a day.

The amount of solids — tiny particles that pass through water treatment filters — is the maximum allowed under federal guidelines.

When BP secured its new permit, federal and state regulators agreed there was not anything the company could do to reduce its discharges. Based largely on what BP told them, regulators concluded there is not enough room at the 1,400-acre refinery for the necessary equipment, according to public documents.

Howard Learner, executive director of the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center, said BP’s options should allow it to move ahead with the expansion.

He said the projected $30 million to $40 million cost of the wastewater upgrades would represent less than 1.5 percent of the refinery expansion and the highly profitable company could easily afford the upgrades. “BP has the resources to do this right,” Learner said.

Posted 9/4/2007