Monday, July 23, 2007

BP & Lake Michigan

Water pollution is a serious environmental issue in most developing countries. Most river and lakes in these countries were destroyed under the pressure of industrialization. The sad thing is, million of people in these countries drawing the polluted water for their daily life. There are environmentalist claim that industrialization is the culprit of the damage.

Actually, human being themselves should be responsible for the damages, not the industries. Peoples bring industries in to the society mainly for their own economical benefit.

There are no industries in the world today can be classified as pollution free. More or less, it discharges certain level of waste to the environment. However, the impact of the waste to the environment could be control at a significantly low level with the aid of advance technology available.

A good example I like to quote is the BP Whiting refinery plant in Michigan since 1890s. Look at the water in Lake Michigan; do you believe there is an oil refinery plant set up near by who discharged waste water continuously into the lake for the past 117 years?

BP position themselves as an energy company who care the environment. Beside money being invested in searching for new energy source, hundred of million of dollar also allocated for keeping the Lake Michigan clean.

Through BP’s Whiting Refinery environmental protection initiative, waster quality of Lake Michigan being protected. Besides increasing in discharges, BP remains within compliance to the federal pollutions guidelines.

BP’s case shows industries by itself cannot control the level of environmental pollution, people play the main role to determine the level of pollution generate by the industries. It is up to you to control, you have the option choose.

For more details information on BP and Lake Michigan, you may refer the link at : Example of a FAIR and FACTUAL article.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I went to the website MWRD.org Chicago Reclamation District and the president calls swhat BP is putting into the lake sludge. This is kind of strange when he runs the same type of facility as BP's and knows or atleast should know what sludge is. Let me say...water treatement plants do not dump sludge in the lake...that is called illegal. If BP is dumping so is every other water treatment facility...look at their data...I did and it opened my eyes.

Also look how the Chicago Reclamation district describes sludge... "Many area golf courses, sod farms, tollway banks and parks are green and fertile because of the rich mixture of sludge and soil. In Fulton County, Illinois, the District is reclaiming 15,000 acres of land which were left barren and ugly from years of strip mining for coal. By leveling the land and enriching the soil with nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients in the sludge, wasteland has been converted to fertile ground for agricultural uses. This program is called the Prairie Plan." http://www.mwrd.org/Processes/solid.htm

Kind of amazing...he makes it sound like sludge is a great product...makes you wonder who is telling truths and who is just slinging sludge.

I signed the petition and now I feel pretty much used by rhetoric. I am well educated. I guess I need to think some more. You let me down Tribune...you let me down Durbin...you let me down Emmanuel...you let me down my college buddies who convinced me to sign the hoopla.

Watch out who you are believing. I have a feeling these talking heads have no clue what they are talking about...they just want your money and votes. It took me long enough to realize that and now that I have signed the da## petition my name is sludge.

Steve R. Chicago North Sider