By RICK CALLAHAN

Associated Press Writer

WHITING, Ind. (AP) — Every day, 20 million gallons of industrial waste carrying everything from hard hats to thick globs of oil flow from BP’s Indiana refinery to its last stop before Lake Michigan — a 30-acre wastewater treatment plant.

Three months ago, the London-based oil company said it would scrap the Whiting refinery’s planned $3.8 billion expansion if it could not find ways to cut the amount of additional waste that project would send into the lake.

Now, as the clock ticks toward a decision on whether the project can proceed, BP PLC says it has not yet figured out how to cut its expected higher discharges. Officials say they have scoured BP’s more than a dozen refineries spread across the globe and come up empty-handed.

“We know how to run refineries and treat waste and so when we say we haven’t found a way, it’s not like there’s a few engineers in Whiting that haven’t found it,” said Whiting refinery manager Dan Sajkowski. “Our whole system has not made clear what the answer would be.”

The company promised in August to cut the projected discharges of ammonia and suspended solids — tiny particles of pollution that elude the current treatment methods. That came after Indiana approved a new permit allowing higher discharges, sparking outrage in nearby Chicago.

BP has cast a wide net in its search for a solution because it needs to have engineering plans in place by next summer so executives can decide if the project is feasible, said company spokesman Scott Dean. The expansion would turn the refinery into a major processor of heavy Canadian crude.

Under a wastewater permit issued in June, the refinery could boost its average daily discharges of ammonia into the lake by 54 percent — from 1,030 to 1,584 pounds — and increase the amount of suspended solids by 35 percent — up from 3,646 pounds to 4,925 pounds.

Environmentalists contend the higher pollutant levels would harm the lake’s health at a time when it’s still recovering from a legacy of decades of virtually unregulated industries. They also said the added discharges by the refinery about 20 miles southeast of Chicago would threaten the source of drinking water for that and other cities in Illinois and Indiana.

“We’ve made decades of progress and invested billions of dollars in reducing industrial pollution to help the Great Lakes get healthier. We can’t take a step backward,” said Cameron Davis, executive director of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Joe Morrison, the treatment plant’s superintendent, said the water currently sent back into the lake is 99.9 percent pure with trace amounts of ammonia and suspended solids.

The refinery is already the nation’s fourth-largest, covering 1,400 acres with skeletal towers and pipelines. And it’s also one of the top industrial polluters along Lake Michigan, particularly in terms of its ammonia discharges, said Peter Swenson, chief of the water permits section in the EPA’s Chicago office.

Indiana environmental officials say, however, that several municipal wastewater treatment plants on Lake Michigan or the other Great Lakes discharge either considerably higher levels of suspended solids and ammonia, or comparable amounts.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management, despite BP’s promise, will still hold the refinery to the new permit’s higher limits, agency spokeswoman Amy Hartsock said.

BP does plan to stick with the new permit’s provision giving it until 2012 to cut mercury discharges to levels previously mandated by the EPA.

Company officials have touted the expansion of the refinery started in 1889 by Standard Oil Co. titan John D. Rockefeller as a step toward lessening America’s reliance on Middle Eastern oil.

The expanded refinery would be the nation’s top processor of the growing supply of heavy high-sulfur Canadian crude, boosting its annual production of gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel by 15 percent to about 4.7 billion gallons annually, Dean said.

It also would add about 2,000 construction or related jobs and 80 new permanent jobs to the 118-year-old refinery’s current 1,700-employee work force.

Dean said more than a third of the project’s budget — about $1.4 billion — will go toward updating the wastewater treatment plant’s series of settling tanks, filtration systems and treatment basins with new pollution-removal features.

The company has hired environmental and engineering consulting firms to find new technologies that could cut the expanded plant’s discharges. And it has funded a $5 million project involving Argonne National Laboratory to assess emerging technologies.

Information and suggestions offered by external groups are also being studied.

One such analysis was done by Tetra Tech Inc., an engineering firm hired by the city of Chicago. Its report concluded BP could upgrade the treatment plant for $40 million or less to make the necessary pollution cuts using technology now used in other refineries. Those include advanced filtration systems and special towers to remove ammonia.

BP officials have been dismissive of the Tetra Tech report, however, saying it was based on limited information about the refinery and what technologies it already had in place or planned.

Tom Anderson, executive director of Michigan City-based Save the Dunes Council, said he is frustrated by BP’s contention that it can’t find new technologies. He said the Tetra Tech report and other consultants suggest otherwise.

“One of the problems is just trying to find accurate information. Is it true or not true?” Anderson said.

Davis, of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, believes a solution will be found as a multibillion-dollar plan rides on the outcome.

“It’s not a question of whether or not it can be done. It’s a question of whether BP is willing to make the investment,” he said.

Posted 11/23/2007