Environmental director grilled on BP chemical dumping

Indiana’s top environmental official told a legislative panel Wednesday that he wishes his agency had heard months ago the concerns now being raised about the permit allowing a BP PLC oil refinery to dump more pollutants into Lake Michigan.\nThomas Easterly, the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, said he was surprised by the uproar over the agency’s June approval of the BP refinery permit because turnout was low on April 26 for the sole public meeting on the request.\n“This is one of my frustrations in this process of what’s happened since then because BP came, the environmental community we’d been working with came, one citizen came,” Easterly said. “It was a very quiet event and we didn’t hear then what we’ve heard since then.”\nThe BP permit allows its Whiting, Ind., refinery a few miles east of Chicago to increase the amount of ammonia it dumps into the lake by 54 percent and the amount of suspended solids by 35 percent as part of a $3.8 billion expansion of the refinery.\nIn the two months since then, a growing number of critics have said the permit amounts to a reversal of decades-long efforts to reduce pollution levels in Lake Michigan. The U.S. House passed in a resolution in July calling for Indiana to reconsider the permit.\nGov. Mitch Daniels on Aug. 13 ordered a review of state laws covering Great Lakes water quality and permits.\nThe Administrative Rules Oversight Committee also heard testimony Tuesday from Dan Sajkowski, the manager of BP’s Whiting refinery, environmentalists and business representatives.