A key member of a coalition working to clean up the Great Lakes on Wednesday cited the uproar over
BP's expansion plans a "perfect example" of how to discourage corporate investment.
"BP went through all the hoops, jumps, tests and requirements currently in place in our public policy and went beyond that and informed all the environmental groups of their intent," said George Kuper, president and CEO of the
Council of Great Lakes Industries. "And still they got hammered from a public relations point of view."
Kuper answered a question on the situation at the BP Whiting refinery as part of a panel discussing a cost/benefits analysis of Great Lakes restoration done by the
Great Lakes Regional Collaboration.
Kuper is a member of the collaboration and spoke on the panel in conference call along with academics and others.
A report just completed by the collaboration estimates a $26 billion investment in restoring the Great Lakes through projects ranging from sewage treatment to keeping out invasive species would produce $50 billion in economic benefit for the region.
"There is no doubt the Great Lakes is a major economic driver," said Andy Buchsbaum, co-chair of the
Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition. "If the lakes get sick, our economy gets sick. If the lakes get better, our economy gets better."
But cases like the BP's, where a project is under way to refine oil from Canadian tar sands, can present a conundrum for groups touting the economic benefits of Great Lakes restoration.
The BP project will create about 80 permanent jobs and an estimated 2,500 construction jobs. BP officials also say the project will enhance the job security of current workers.
In cases like BP's, one clearly can see and count the number of jobs that will be produced, said Paul Courant, a member of the collaboration panel and a professor of economics at the University of Michigan. But the jobs created must be weighed against the negative effects of the increased pollution.
The collaboration's report, released on Thursday, is the most exhaustive effort to date to calculate the overall economic benefits of a renewed ecology in the Great Lakes basin.
Among the benefits, it says, would be fewer beach closures, better opportunities for recreational and commercial fishing, enhancing the lakes as a tourist draw, and reduced costs for water treatment.
Short-term benefits would include the thousands of jobs created by projects to upgrade sewage treatment plants and reduce other forms of pollution.
If the benefits of the cleanup are measured by increases in property values around the Great Lakes, the benefit comes out to the same $50 billion.
But panel participants acknowledged the thorny nature of issues like the BP refinery's new waste discharge permit. The permit issued by the
Indiana Department of Environmental Management will allow BP to increase ammonia discharges into the lake by 54 percent and sediment discharges by 35 percent.
That permit set off a political firestorm, with Illinois politicians and environmental groups attacking BP and IDEM, claiming the permit sets back efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.
"There are always trade-offs," said Gary Becker, the mayor of Racine, Wis., and a member of the collaboration panel. "Some you can quantify and some of it is clearly political in nature."