"EPA will ask BP to offset pollution"
August 15, 2007
Factual Errors
1. Hawthorne again calls solids �tiny sludge particles.� Again, we�re talking about 30 ppm of solids in what is over 99.99% water. If this is sludge, then you are drinking sludge every time you pour a glass of tap water.
Spin
1. This is not so much spin as it is stupid: Hawthorne tells us that the rock groups Pearl Jam and Wilco have joined the list of opponents to BP�s project. Really? Well alrighty then. If Pearl Jam and Wilco are opposing the project, then science be damned. I�m sold!
2. In what is truly a remarkable statement, Hawthorne says that BP has �paid Internet bloggers to defend the permit�. You mean I can get paid for defending reason? Man, where do I sign up?!
But seriously, is this statement anything close to credible? How could Hawthorne possibly know this (and he�s clearly stating it as a fact). Did BP admit to paying bloggers? Did repentant bloggers call Messr. Hawthorne to cleanse their souls? Or, is this Michael Hawthorne in defensive mode? He�s got to be taking some heat for his wildly biased and inaccurate articles. How better to dismiss his critics than to claim that those critics have been paid off. The alternative, that there are a lot of outraged people out there who understand what�s really going on and who know that he is full of BS, doesn�t seem to occur to him.
3. Hawthorne again cites the 1,584 pounds of ammonia per day and 4,925 pounds of solids per day that BP can discharge. He has yet to give us any perspective. He has yet to say that natural sources contribute far more ammonia and solids to lake water. He has yet to give us a relevant point of comparison, like the Metropolitan Water Reclamation Districts Calumet plant, which is permitted to discharge over 25,000 pounds per day of ammonia and 80,000 pounds of solids per day. He has yet to say that EPA identifies three steelmills in Northwest Indiana as the biggest dischargers in the area, responsible for over 90% of industrial discharges there. He has yet to say that ammonia is not a pollutant of concern in Lake Michigan and that solids are merely on the watch list.
Any of that data would put BP�s project in proper perspective, which is that this project is a peewee. But we have learned that we can�t expect any perspective from this reporter.
4. Hawthorne again refers to mixing zones as if they are something unique and somehow sinister. They aren�t. They represent good pollution control practice.
5. Hawthorne notes that Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana has appointed a panel to review the state�s permitting process. (Which is more stringent than the Federal process, by the by). He does not tell you that the panel will also: �Evaluate the impact of BP�s proposed discharge on Lake Michigan�s quality and uses as a source of drinking water, recreation, and aquatic life.� Seems like kind of an important point, but perhaps our cub reporter is afraid of what those conclusions may be.
6. Hawthorne identifies BP as one of the companies that paid $56 million to settle an EPA complaint and to clean up the Grand Calumet River and the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal. He does not tell you that BP�s contribution to the pollution in the river and canal was relatively minor. Other sources were identified as the big hitters.
7. Finally, isn�t there something missing from the overall tone of this article? If EPA is suggesting that BP pay to control other sources of discharges into Lake Michigan, doesn�t that kind of tell you that BP is not the only source of wastewater discharges into the lake, and not all that significant of one? (As we have been saying all along). It�s not a pristine lake that BP will suddenly ruin. It�s a complex eco-system in which man and nature co-exist, and which has gotten a whole lot cleaner over the last 30 years. The reason for that clean up is the regulatory system that Hawthorne chooses to belittle. It�s a system that effectively manages thousands of sources of wastewater discharges, a point that somehow continues to elude this befuddled reporter.
