You cant bend the laws...

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Top Wop
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You cant bend the laws...

Post by Top Wop »

...but multi-billion dollar corporations can. :roll:

http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/0 ... 6252.shtml

Its official: Indiana sucks. That and the fact that mostly daft people live there. And a cop every 2 miles to watch and try to find a good reason to pull you over and harass you because he's bored. :roll:
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Post by Krom »

Retarded, oil companies make billions in profit every year, they could afford to spend a bit more on properly cleaning up their own messes. It isn't like their revenue streams are going to dry up anytime soon.
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Post by JMEaT »

WTF, how the hell is this legal.
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Post by Warlock »

thank god we sell Fina gas :P
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Post by CDN_Merlin »

Money talks and I'm sure the local politicians are getting funded HEAVILY.
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Post by Blue »

JMEaT wrote:WTF, how the hell is this legal.
80 new jobs. duh
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Post by d3jake »

Heh, as its been said, money talks and butts*** walks. If you have enough money, you can do anything. Its sad though that oil companies have gotten so greety that they want to screw the environment, not only that, but the state is letting them.
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Post by Isaac »

i was so shocked to see that India was dropping waste on our homeland that I yelled out, \"YOU GUYS!! LOOK AT THIS!\" And then it turned out i need glasses. But still. Indiana, that's inexcusable.
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Post by Lothar »

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Post by dissent »

This thread obviously needed an update ...

I blame the reporters!


Seems like this is what got the ball rolling …
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... &cset=true
http://www.post-trib.com/news/477904,ussteel.article
http://www.nwitimes.com/articles/2007/0 ... 73ac49.txt
http://www.nwitimes.com/articles/2007/0 ... 0fc967.txt

Well, the BP refinery has a web site, did any of the reporters or politicians have a look at it?
http://whiting.bp.com/go/doc/1550/165356/
http://www.arenaofhyip.com/2007/07/bp-w ... story.html

yet more news:
http://www.nwitimes.com/articles/2007/0 ... 0fc967.txt
accuracy adjustment needed?
Yeah; it sounds like it to me (see below)

http://chestertontribune.com/Environmen ... t_agai.htm

I blame the reporters!

It looks to me like a lot of the initial reporting on this issue used a lot of inflammatory phrasing and downright WRONG information and fed it to the public on a platter. NO context for understanding was provided. Some citizens got alarmed and now the politicians are getting all up in arms and petitions are circulating.

Hey, here’s an idea; why don’t we just go to the permit that IDEM granted and see what it says. It can be found on this page:

http://www.in.gov/idem/permits/water/wa ... notice/#BP

a couple of facts I gleaned from even a perfunctory perusal of the permit –

from page 3 –
(for Discharge Outfall 001)

“[2] The pH of the effluent shall be no less than 6.0 and no greater than 9.0 standard units (s.u.)”

from page 8 –
(for Discharge Outfall 002)

“[2] The pH of the effluent shall be no less than 6.0 and no greater than 9.0 standard units (s.u.)”


The word “sludge” appears ONCE (that I can find) in the permit document. It is on page 47, to wit –

\"4. Removed Substances

Solids, sludges, filter backwash, or other pollutants removed from or resulting from treatment or control of wastewaters shall be disposed of in a manner such as to prevent any pollutant from such materials from entering waters of the State and to be in compliance with all Indiana statutes and regulations relative to liquid and/or solid waste disposal.\"

(emphasis mine)


REALLY!!! It even says directly in the permit that sludge is NOT permitted to be dumped into the lake. So where did the reporters get the idea that BP WAS going to be allowed to dump MORE sludge into the lake? At best this is a travesty of slipshod reporting. At worst these are deliberate falsehoods in the best traditions of yellow journalism.

The article I just saw in this morning’s Daily Herald (Naperville) is now characterizing the material in the permit as “silt” instead of “sludge”. Is this supposed to be an improvement on factual reporting? Get a clue folks. TSS (total suspended solids) in the permit IS NOT SLUDGE. It IS NOT SILT. If you want to get on BP’s case, then do so for bona fide facts and not ridiculous distortions that a simple reading of the document would clarify.

I think the reporters of these initial stories all owe the public an apology for the blatant inaccuracies. I think the politicians should stop trying to slum for cheap political points when they should be providing leadership on understanding public policy decisions.
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Post by dissent »

missed the edit -

one more
http://www.bpissuenews.com/go/site/1550
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Post by Top Wop »

I dont know if you are trying to make yourself look credible or not, but all of those links at the beginning ether talk about the same thing or are ponitless, just posting one same thing after another 4 times, just different sources. :? All you posted was the same articles released a week ago, a fact sheet from none other than BP, and some idiot with a blog who merely regurgitated what was on BP's fact sheet.

Yellow journalism or not, this doesn't change the fact that they will be discharging more TSS than before. I don't know if you have heard of Lake Erie. We have enough problems as is with invasive species in Lake Michigan.

Here's a link I believe is more informative and credible than some of the others you posted:
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/basin/data/BACT/info/TSS.html
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Post by dissent »

Top Wop wrote:I dont know if you are trying to make yourself look credible or not,

oh, but I AM credible ... 8)
... but all of those links at the beginning ether talk about the same thing or are ponitless, just posting one same thing after another 4 times, just different sources. :?
ah, but these multiple report links are EXACTLY the point, which is that some few reporters inaccurately wrote stories and that now the public is reacting (wildly and hysterically, imho) to the bogus information in these stories. So multiple links of the same thing are just indicative of the fact that the reporters are just parroting data without doing their own research.
All you posted was the same articles released a week ago, a fact sheet from none other than BP, and some idiot with a blog who merely regurgitated what was on BP's fact sheet.
If someone starting spreading incorrect information about you all over the newspapers and the airwaves, wouldn't you seek to respond to it and get that information corrected?
Yellow journalism or not, this doesn't change the fact that they will be discharging more TSS than before. I don't know if you have heard of Lake Erie. We have enough problems as is with invasive species in Lake Michigan.
(a) yes, they have a permit for more TSS, but the discharge will still be within compliance limits set in the Clean Water Act.
(b) yes, I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, (1950's and 1960's) so I have heard of Lake Erie. What has that got to do with the current environmental laws under the Clean Water Act?
Here's a link I believe is more informative and credible than some of the others you posted:
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/basin/data/BACT/info/TSS.html
Actually, none of the links I posted discussed what TSS was.
(a) thanks for the helpful link
(b) and isn't that part of the problem? The news reports initially characterized the discharge as "sludge" (repeatedly). Some are today using the word "silt". Wouldn't it be refreshing if one of the professional journalists could manage to write up a story with the correct terms and some helpful description for those of us in the poor, benighted public. Heck, I think some of our politicians might also benefit from dealing with actual facts instead of BS. (well, maybe not; might be hard for them to recognize)
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Post by Wishmaster »

If BP is genuinely dumping harmful materials in Lake Michigan, I'll be upset (especially since I live in Michigan), but I'm kind of suspicious. One thing that stands out is the word \"silt\". If they are truly dumping silt in the lake, who cares? Silt, as defined by Dictionary.com, is \"earthy matter, fine sand, or the like carried by moving or running water and deposited as a sediment.\" In other words, the material that naturally sits on the bottom of the lake, BP or no BP. My instincts say that this is just another media bandwagon.
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Post by Top Wop »

Sorry for me being angry. You are right about the media misinformation, but it still bothers me what BP is trying to do, and I dont trust them one bit. Not while they are making record profits.
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Post by Blue »

Top Wop wrote:...I dont trust them one bit. Not while they are making record profits.
You must REALLY trust interplay then :P
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Post by Money! »

Yea I talk.
Birdseye wrote:It's never over
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Post by Top Wop »

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... &cset=true

With the way this looks I dont think BP is going to go anywhere with this. Good.
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Post by roid »

I MOVED THIS THREAD


ME
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Post by Top Wop »

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Post by Palzon »

Dissent, aren't you the guy who works for oil industry?
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Post by dissent »

yup; well, petrochemical industry, anyway.
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Post by dissent »

Ok, let’s deconstruct some of this recent article written by Michael Hawthorne –
Michael Hawthorne wrote: Few complained about the permit while it was under consideration earlier this year, something critics said could be attributed to paltry outreach by BP and Indiana regulators. But following a Tribune story about the project in mid-July, opponents gathered more than 100,000 petition signatures, …
Come now, Mr. Hawthorne, you are too modest!! The article in question was from July 15th, where you said the following
Michael Hawthorne wrote: The massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., is planning to dump significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan, running counter to years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.”
(all emphases are mine, unless otherwise stated), and
“Under BP's new state water permit, the refinery -- already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes -- can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.”
As I have demonstrated in previous posts, Mr. Hawthorne either (a) read the permit and did not understand it, (b) read the permit and decided to completely ignore the clear statement in the permit that said that sludge dumping of any kind was not allowed (and hence BP could not have been making an application to dump more sludge into the lake), or (c) he simply did not even read the permit. Yet Mr. Hawthorne and his editor(s) left the story as they did, and I do not believe that yet to this day have they retracted any of this false assertion of sludge dumping.

However, in the current article (24 August), Mr. Hawthorne demures from repeating the sludge dumping charge in so many words, stating
Michael Hawthorne wrote: The permit allows BP to put an average of 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of suspended solids into the lake every day. The amount of solids, tiny sludge particles that pass through water treatment filters, is the maximum allowed under federal guidelines.
Come now, Mr. Hawthorne, where is the confident assurance of your previous writing that BP was dumping actual sludge into the lake? Since when did this become “suspended solids”? But notice the way he still tries to eke out a measure of respectability for his prior report by stating that the suspended solids are “tiny sludge particles”. These micron-sized particles can come from anywhere in the wastewater treatment process, so trying to rescue his previous statement of sludge “full of concentrated heavy metals”, to coin a phrase, simply does not wash.

In fact, let’s do a few simple calculations. BP reports from their website that the Whiting refinery uses about 120 million gallons per day of non-contact wastewater (used from process cooling only, no contact with internal chemical process) and discharges about 20 million gallons per day of treated wastewater. 20 million gallons is about 166.6 million pounds of water. At the permit average limit of 4925 pounds/day of TSS (total suspended solids) in that 166.6 million pounds of water, this comes to a concentration of TSS of about 0.002956%, or on the order of 29-30 ppm (parts per million) of TSS in BP’s wastewater discharge.

Now, I’ll admit that I am not a refinery expert. Nor am I a wastewater treatment expert. I am certainly not a BP spokesperson. Perhaps my calculations have failed to take some critical factor into account. I will be happy to be corrected by any such knowledgeable person. But as I see them right now, these concentration levels are nowhere near what could reasonably be considered anything like an actual sludge discharge. BP states on their Whiting website that their treated wastewater discharge is 99.9% water. There are separate specified limits on various other wastewater contaminants, and none of these other limits were increased in the new permit to BP.

One might think from the press coverage that BP was the only entity “dumping” pollutants into the lake. Yet every municipality or business that releases its treated wastewater into Lake Michigan is also “dumping” TSS and ammonia into the lake. These are normal results of wastewater treatment processes. Each of these entities has their own water discharge permit.

Yet the hysteria continues. So, when will Mr. Hawthorne, his editor(s), or the Chicago Tribune make a loud public correction to the false information printed in their paper? When will we no longer be subjected to Great Lakes politicians grandstanding and showboating (literally in the case of the execrable Mark Kirk) on this issue? When will consumers realize that there are two ways to put downward pressure on gasoline prices; either decrease the demand for gasoline, or increase the supply of gasoline (for example, by increasing the capacity of existing refineries)?

I know I’ll be waiting, drinking a nice cool glass of Lake Michigan tap water in the meantime.

In closing,
http://whiting.bp.com/posted/1550/Sajko ... 169737.pdf
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