BY CHRISTINE KRALY, Times of Northwest Indiana
ckraly@nwitimes.comEnvironmentalists praised
BP's promise not to further pollute Lake Michigan Thursday, but cautioned it doesn't clean up the company's pollution issues.
"I think it's important to commend BP -- and this is coming from one of their biggest critics -- for reconsidering," said Cameron Davis, president of the
Alliance for the Great Lakes.
But BP's concession not to pollute beyond its previous wastewater permit limits, Davis said, still glosses over the bigger issue.
"The point of a permit limit isn't to give a discharger a way to safely pollute so that it's not penalized," Davis said. "It's to really push those pollution discharges downward over time."
"That's the moral of the story here," he said. "We can't step backward anymore."
Tom Anderson, executive director of the
Save the Dunes Council, lauded BP's decision, and called it "great news for Lake Michigan."
Davis' group stressed the need to make BP's pledge more official.
"We need to make sure these assurances will be locked into a permit, that they're not just statements," Davis said.
Lee Botts, Alliance member and veteran environmentalist, agreed, adding, "We need to see it in writing.
"It's a wonderful sign," Botts said. "However," she added, "the ammonia and total suspended solids were not the only issues we raised to them in consultation."
The Alliance filed an appeal to BP's permit last week, which Davis said the group will continue pursuing. The group likely will meet with lawyers for BP and the
Indiana Department of Environmental Management to discuss the petition, Davis said.
BP spokesman Scott Dean said, "We have made a commitment verbally," and that any permit changes would be an IDEM issue. "We're not a regulatory body," Dean said.
IDEM referred all calls related to BP to Gov. Mitch Daniels' office.