Engineering firm offers options to BP to keep pollution levels even

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 place at other refineries to significantly cut the new plant's discharges into Lake Michigan.

For $30 million to $40 million, BP could convert a new 10-million-gallon storm surge tank on site and use part of it to grow microorganisms to treat the waste.

That would require very little additional space and cost little up front, Tetra Tech reported.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management issued BP's permit after accepting the company's argument that there wasn't enough room at the the 1,400-acre refinery to build another treatment plant specifically to remove ammonia.

BP told IDEM that putting a separate tank elsewhere "would result in extensive piping, pumps and processes inefficiencies making this option extremely expensive, if not infeasible."

"We are confident that it can be done," Joe Deal, an assistant to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, told a reporter.

Meanwhile, the Illinois congressional delegation was planning to meet with BP officials in early September to talk about which alternatives BP had considered.

A spokesperson for Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin said Tuesday that officials are still working on scheduling the meeting.

The new wastewater permit allows BP to increase ammonia discharges by 54 percent, to an average of 1,584 pounds a day, and discharges of suspended solids -- tiny particles that pass through water treatment filters -- by 35 percent, to 4,925 pounds a day. That's the federal limit.

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.

On Aug. 15 -- more than a week before BP made its pledge to abide by its old permit limits -- city of Chicago officials presented alternatives in a draft of the Tetra Tech report at a summit with BP America Vice Chairman Steve Elbert in Chicago.

The report is "a best estimate based on the limited available information on the waste stream characteristics and physical treatment units" at BP, the draft report states.

The cost estimate is "a planning stage estimation without knowing wastewater characteristics and the existing facility on site."

Yet, Deal said he believes the alternatives could work at the refinery.

"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 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.

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 cost of 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.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.