BP won't dump more pollution into Lake Michigan.
Despite being granted a wastewater permit allowing it to do so, BP will not increase its ammonia and suspended solids discharges into Lake Michigan, the company said Thursday.
Responding to more than a month of public bashing, BP said it will proceed with its $3.8 billion
Whiting Refinery expansion plan but will do so while adhering to previous permit limits.
The company vowed, as it has before, to find discharge-minimizing solutions for the project.
But BP also said axing the project could be possible.
"If necessary changes to the project result in a material impact to project viability, we could be forced to cancel it," BP America President Bob Malone said in a statement.
Doing that would endanger 80 permanent and 3,000 temporary region jobs, said Kevin Brinegar, president of the
Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
"These are high-demand jobs that can't easily be replaced in Northwest Indiana," Brinegar said in a statement.
Malone called the expansion important for the nation, the Midwest and the company.
BP spokesman Scott Dean said "it's too soon to say" if the company would scrap the project.
BP will spend the next 18 months seeking other permits for the project -- still in its design and engineering phase -- as well as ways to lower emissions, Dean said.
"We are going to have our engineers and scientists roll up their sleeves ... and see if there's a silver bullet out there," Dean said. "Can we do it? We don't know, but we're committed to try."
Under its new permit, BP is allowed to dump 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more suspended solids into the lake daily. BP officials have stood behind that expanded permit, saying it meets state and federal guidelines and complies with the Clean Water Act.
But outrage from citizens and lawmakers from several states have created an "unacceptable business risk" for the company, BP said.
Last week, BP America Vice Chairman Stephen Elbert said he expected the Whiting project processing Canadian crude oil would "in absolute terms" increase output of both pollutants. He said BP discharges a fraction of what it is allowed under its existing limits.
Thursday's statement comes a day after BP and the
Indiana Department of Environmental Management spent hours again defending the permit as safe for the lake, its drinking water and aquatic life.
Asked why the company had not made or announced its decision downstate Wednesday, Dean said, "We just hadn't gotten to that place yet."
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who has supported BP through its firestorm of criticism, said he hoped the pledge would quiet "the hypocrisy of politicians elsewhere whose states dump vastly greater amounts of effluent in the Great Lakes and other bodies of water."
Illinois lawmakers U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, vocal critics of BP's plan, called the company's decision "a watershed moment for Lake Michigan."
BP also announced it would contribute $5 million to a review of refining technologies being conducted by
Purdue Calumet's Water Institute and
Argonne National Laboratory.