Fighting Oil Refinery Pollution and Road Boondoggles
Fighting global warming pollution from oil refinery expansion. Eight oil refinery expansions have been proposed across the Midwest over the past few months due in large part to the newly commercially viable tar sands in Alberta, Canada. Alberta tar sands or Canadian crude is sandy, petroleum rich deposits which can be harvested, then transported to oil refineries to be processed and converted into workable fuel for our cars and trucks, among other things. The potential increase in global warming from the oil refinery expansions is huge. One proposed new oil refinery in Hyperion, SD would add 19 million tons of pollutants - the equivalent of 4 to 6 new coal-fired power plants to the state. The proposed expansion by BP in northwest Indiana is reported to increase global warming pollution by 40%.
I-69 boondoggle: The Environmental Law and Policy Center is working with local environmental, farm, business and taxpayers’ organizations to prevent one of the nation’s great boondoggles: the controversial proposed “new terrain” Interstate 69 highway from Indianapolis to Evansville, in Southwestern Indiana. NBC Nightly News called this billion-dollar highway a “Fleecing of America.” We are fighting for a plan to upgrade existing highways would create a travel time between Indianapolis and Evansville only ten minutes longer than the same trip made on the proposed new highway. This alternative, using Interstate 70 and an upgraded US 41, would save $600 million of taxpayers’ money. It would be far less damaging to farmland, to the environment, and to Indianapolis, Bloomington, and other communities.
Clean Water Act Implementation
Over the next year, ELPC is ramping up its Clean Water Act implementation work in Indiana under new support from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Initial priorities include:
- Building citizen and local capacity to more effectively participate in the policy process
- Advancing the state’s under-developed “anti-degradation” rules
- Improving, upgrading and adding new use designations and water quality criteria, and
- Implementing and enforcing existing state clean water regulations.
Our attorneys Albert Ettinger and Brad Klein have already begun working with our partners at the Hoosier Environmental Council, Save the Dunes, the Sierra Club and other Indiana organizations to develop new “anti-degradation” rules that would correct future problems like the one involving the BP-Whiting refinery that generated so much controversy last year. We also are following issues related to nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the Hoosier State.
