Another account on how East Chicago is connected to what is happening in Northern Alberta (previous account from Henry).

BP and our Economic Development Gurus have put East Chicago on a diet of Tar Sands. I thought it appropriate for you to see how the TAR SANDS are destroying our most vital and fragile resources - The land, the water, the air, and our peoples.

[ Elemental ]

Elemental - Trailer from Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee on Vimeo.

Elemental is a documentary produced and directed by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. It explores our essential relationship to water, and the fundamental importance of reevaluating that relationship in the face of the global environmental crisis. It is a universal cause told through three stories on three continents, one of which East Chicago is intimately involved.

Eriel Deranger participated in the film and the telling of her story - the story of her people - the story East Chicago is so dependent on for economic development. Eriel is a native Dené from Northern Alberta, Canada. She is a young mother and activist determined to protect the future of her people from the ecological genocide wrought by living downstream from the largest industrial development in the world: the Albertan Tar Sands. I met Eriel in Edmonton last fall.

Remember the “STUFF” BP is piping into our community to refine is more than the land on which she lives - The Tar Sands, it includes Eriel’s Story and the lives of her people. She will tell more…

Thomas Environment, Tar Sands, The Water I Drink

For the people of East Chicago.

BP and our Economic Development Gurus have put East Chicago on a diet of Tar Sands. I thought it appropriate for you to see what the TAR SANDS are and what East Chicago is so dependent on for ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.

Please listen to Henry. He is a gentle man from the Dene Nation in the Northwest Territories. I recently met him in Edmonton.

Remember the “STUFF” BP is piping into our community to refine is the land on which he lives - The Tar Sands. He will tell more…

Thomas Tar Sands

This TED Talk of Naomi Klein reminds me that I need to right a wrong. I never gave her work a fair look. Perhaps it was because she focused on some of the same narratives that I did and I held those around my circle in much higher esteem. I need to change that and finally read her book the “Shock Doctrine.”

Regardless, this is a great talk that proportions the right mix of critique in this tragedy: Risk Assessments, The Precautionary Principle (Thanks Carolyn Raffensperger), Hubris, and Feminism.

Thomas Climate Change, Tar Sands, What I am Looking at

Please take a moment and listen to Henry. He is a gentle man of the Dene Nation in the Northwest Territories. I recently met him in Edmonton when I was there for the “Everyone’s Downstream” Conference at the University of Alberta. This documentary was products by Felix Gonzales.

His life is directly linked to ours in East Chicago and Whiting.

BP is mining the surface of his land - The Tar Sands - and piping it to BP’s Whiting Refinery. Please remember the gas you are burning is the land on which he lives - The Tar Sands.

more on [ Tar Sands ] by Felix Gonzales

Thomas Energy, Tar Sands

[ Everyone's Downstream IV ] International Conference - November 25 - 28, Edmonton, Alberta

Below is my presentation on East Chicago and BP’s Canadian Crude project.

Click on image to begin slideshow.

[ Video Archive ] of Conference

Thomas East Chicago, Energy, Environment, Northwest Indiana, Tar Sands

via [ Sierra Club ] Toxic Tar Sands: Indiana

Carolyn Marsh, Whiting Indiana

Carolyn Marsh’s house in Whiting, Indiana, just southeast of Chicago, sits within walking distance of both Lake Michigan and the BP Whiting Refinery. One is beautiful and the other, Marsh says, looks like “a death trap zone.” Now BP is pushing to expand the capacity of its refinery to process tar sands crude.

The synthetic heavy crude produced from tar sands is laden with more toxins than conventional oil. If the expansion goes through, people like Marsh, who live in the shadow of these refineries, will face increased exposure to heavy metals, sulfur, and carcinogens like benzene.

After learning of BP’s plans to pump tar sands pollution into the air and her community, Marsh was galvanized to action. She joined a legal challenge to the oil giant’s air permit.

Marsh believes BP’s permit application dramatically underestimates the potential air pollution from their tar sands expansion. The company understated the amount of toxic gases vented from flares, claiming they would only be released occasionally. But flaring will only increase as the refinery handles more of the world’s dirtiest oil.

Flaring is only one part of the refinery’s massive polluting process, and air pollution is not the only threat that Marsh fears from the tar sands expansion.

“We don’t want Lake Michigan to become another oil industry sacrifice zone. Quality of life here in Indiana should not suffer for foreign oil profits.”

The refinery is already one of the largest sources of mercury pollution in Lake Michigan. Mercury is a

Tar sands crude spells disaster for clean water in every step of its life cycle. If tar sands operations continue to expand in America, Lake Michigan will be exposed to the same types of contamination spreading through the once pristine water sources along the Athabasca River in Alberta, where tar sands are mined.

A recent study published by leading Canadian scientists found elevated concentrations of toxic heavy metals including arsenic, lead and mercury around and downstream from tar sands mining operations, suggesting a strong correlation between tar sands mining and toxic discharges to water resources.These poisonous impurities are released in refining as well, and discharges from BP’s tar sands expansion will bring the pollution of the Athabasca directly to Lake Michigan.

Marsh believes the citizen struggle to stop the tar sands expansion is her community’s best line of defense, and she has committed to the fight. She has little faith in state regulators, whom she believes are too complicit with toxic conditions created by BP’s refinery. Marsh knows what’s at stake.

Lake Michigan, which provides drinking water for 10 million people, will be exposed to new levels of contamination from particulate emissions and huge increases in ammonia and other discharges into the water from the refinery’s tar sands expansion.potent neurotoxin that causes severe fetal damage, impaired motor function, and kidney and respiratory damage in humans. ”We don’t want Lake Michigan to become another oil industry sacrifice zone. Quality of life here in Indiana should not suffer for foreign oil profits,” she says.

Thomas Environment, Local, Northwest Indiana, Regional, Tar Sands

via [ OurWorld 2.0 ] “Mapping critical politics: a land use expert talks tar sands” By Max Ritts

The late geographer Bernard Nietschmann once observed that “more indigenous territory has been claimed by maps than by guns”. Whether or not you agree that more can be taken back with maps, it is hard to overestimate the role of representations in the shaping of collective understandings and modes of possible intervention in political struggle.

Land use maps can have a number of applications. In many countries, they are prepared by government agencies, for a variety of reasons, or by individual groups and organizations. Often, land use maps are made publicly available for the benefit of those interested in land use trends. These maps can also become important in zoning and property disputes. Read more…

Thomas Case Studies, Tar Sands, Ways of Seeing

via [ Vancouver Media Co-op ] “The Whole World is Downstream - Community members say negative impacts of the tar sands have a global reach” By Sandra Cuffe

Community members impacted by tar sands development came together in Edmonton this weekend to make it explicit that the tar sands isn’t just an issue in Alberta, or even just in Canada. Climate justice activists have long made the point that the tar sands are a leading driver of emissions worldwide.

But in addition to changing the climate, the direct impacts of tar sands extraction are already making themselves felt across the globe. Even though the principle extraction area is in Alberta, transportation and refining of tar sands oil is touching the lives of people from Madagascar to B.C. to Trinidad.

The community of Fort Chipewyan is located approximately 250km downstream from biggest tar sands projects near Fort McMurray. Because of its proximity to what some call the tar sands gigaproject, folks in Fort Chipewyan have felt the impacts of the tar sands on ecosystems, health, and communities, and their people have been on the front lines, fighting back hard.

“Fort Chipewyan has been at the forefront of this challenge,” said former Mikisew Cree First Nation Chief George Poitras, adding that the name of the community is now synonymous with resistance to the tar sands. ”We’ve made a lot of progress on making the tar sands an international issue,” said Poitras.

Due in large part to the outspoken resistance by Fort Chipewyan, other Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities now have more information and case studies to defend their own lands from the onslaught of the tar sands giga-project. Actual and proposed pipelines, refineries, and ports designed to transport tar sands oil from Alberta to destinations around the world crisscross the continent.

“One of the reasons we’re fighting so much is because of what’s happening there [in Fort Chipewyan],” explained Toghestiy, a hereditary chief from the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in north central British Columbia.

There is clear vocal opposition to the five pipelines proposed for construction through the 22,000 square kilometers of unceded Wet’suwet’en territory. grassroots Indigenous resistance has been a thorn in the side of Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would transport oil from the tar sands to the coastal port of Kitimat, BC, in order to facilitate its export to Asia.

At the end of the pipelines are the refineries, which can have serious consequences for local residents. Visual artist and former urban planner Thomas Frank discussed the impacts of a BP refinery project in East Chicago, in northwestern Indiana.

Using his own research, Frank showed maps of East Chicago, with small pockets of neighbourhoods steeped in steel worker culture surrounded by a myriad of industrial projects, from steel mills to oil refineries. The poverty-ridden core communities, principally made up of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and African-Americans, live between smokestacks, toxic waste sites, and the Indiana Harbor Shipping Channel, which is considered the most contaminated waterway in the United States.

“This is a serious environmental justice issue that accumulates wealth and benefits in one location while clustering risks and blights in another,” said Frank.Ninety percent of the water in the Channel consists of wastewater from industry and sewage, explained Frank, adding that Indiana discharges 33% more toxins into waterways than any other state. The sheer quantity of toxic discharges in Indiana, with 6.4 million people, amounts to more than the last 26 states combined, the latter representing over 100 million inhabitants.

BP was cited in 2009 for releasing multiple times the permitted level of benzene in a period spanning six years. Permits issued to the company also allowed for 1600 pounds of ammonia to be released into Lake Michigan per day, in clear violation of the Clean Water Act. In fact, explained Frank, BP moved its training facilities from the area to Illinois, citing concerns about “quality of life” issues for the company’s professionals.

Priya Ganness-Nanton, a community organizer from the Rights Action Group in Trinidad and Tobago, told the story of successful community struggle against an aluminum mill in the country. Ganness-Nanton hopes to take the lessons from the long history of struggle in Trinidad and use them to fight the tar sands exploitation recently announced by the government.

“In February of 2009, Minister of Energy Conrad Enill announced that the bitumen should be extracted using Canada’s experience as a model,” wrote Macdonald Stainsby of Oil Sands Truth in an article written after a visit to Trinidad earlier this year.

Other conference participants shared information about places where companies are planning to exploit tar sands deposits. Ashley Anderson of Peaceful Uprising in Utah talked about their resistance to Calgary-based Earth Energy Resources’ plan to develop tar sands deposits near Moab, in an area well-known and well-visited for its natural beauty. Macdonald Stainsby explained about corporate plans to develop tar sands deposits in Madagascar, Morocco, and a joint project between Jordan and Israel.

Videos of all of the presentations made on Saturday, dedicated to community reports from Fort Chipewyan to Trinidad, are available for viewing online. Sandra Cuffe has been reporting from the fourth annual Everyone’s Downstream conference in Edmonton for the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Thomas Energy, Infrastructure, International, Tar Sands

via [ Post-trib ] “Indiana lagging on renewable energy plan - Illinois, Michigan standards help attract investment” By Gitte Laasby

When it comes to renewable energy, economic development officials in Michigan could be laughing all the way to the bank.

Michigan’s renewable energy policy has attracted billions of dollars in investments over the last two years while neighboring Indiana sat idly by. The developments are expected to create thousands of jobs in manufacturing — a blow to industrial areas like Northwest Indiana.

How Indiana compares

Here’s how Indiana’s renewable energy standards compare to other states. Standards generally require electric utilities to generate a certain amount of electricity from renewable or alternative energy sources by a given date.

Illinois: 25 percent of energy from renewables by 2025 (75 percent of that from wind.) Adopted in 2007.

Indiana: None.

Michigan: 10 percent renewable energy portfolio by 2015 (some may be from energy efficiency.) Adopted in 2008.

Ohio: 25 percent of all electricity sold in 2025 must come from alternative energy (12.5 percent from renewables, half of that must be produced in state. The alternative energy may be energy efficiency and clean coal.) Adopted in 2008.

Wisconsin: 10 percent by 2015. Adopted in 2006.

Source: Pew Climate Center on Global Climate Change, Oct. 2010

The strategy isn’t a secret, although Michigan officials aren’t keen on promoting something that would take away their competitive advantage: The boom started in 2008 when Michigan passed a law requiring utilities to get 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources and energy efficiency by 2015.

“Since the adoption of the renewable energy standard in Michigan, we have attracted more than $9 billion in new investment in new alternative energy manufacturing business,” said Michael Shore, spokesman for Michigan Economic Development Corp.

“That $9 billion is projected to create more than 9,000 jobs over the next 10 years. We’ve gotten significant new investments in solar energy manufacturing, wind energy, biofuels as well as advanced battery. Those are the green, sustainable energy sectors we’ve targeted.”

Indiana is one of 14 states nationwide without any kind of renewable energy standard, according to the Pew Center of Global Climate Change. The Indiana Legislature has considered one the past four sessions. Both houses passed separate bills last year, but couldn’t agree on a compromise because one senator wanted to include nuclear among renewables. Other lawmakers cited concerns that electricity rates will increase if utilities have to get a certain percentage of energy from renewables, which are more expensive than coal.

“Renewable standards have been criticized for their driving rates up, but environmental groups have said we’ll put a cost cap on renewable energy standards,” said Jesse Kharbanda, executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council. “That standard was never set on something like (Duke’s) Edwardsport (power plant.) Now we’re dealing with a 17 percent rate increase. Renewable companies can meet that.

“It’s a valid concern for people in a bad economy to be worried about rate increases but we’re willing to put a cap on it. Rates would not increase more than, say, 5 percent compared to business as usual.”

Shore makes no bones about the fact that in terms of the renewable standard, Indiana’s loss may be Michigan’s gain.

“The renewable energy standard by itself is only a first step. It’s like a high school diploma or GED. You’re not ready to be a professional in any field, but you can’t realistically get there, or easily get there, without it,” he said.

In 2009, Michigan supplemented the standard with tax credits for renewable energy development. To get the credits, companies had to go through a review. That helped companies when the federal government later offered stimulus funding, securing Michigan $1.3 billion — a sizable portion of the $5.8 billion total investment in advanced battery technology.

Standard helps Illinois

In Illinois, renewable energy standards adopted in 2007 are also making an impact.

The percentage of electricity that utilities are required to purchase from renewable energy sources increases annually from 5 percent in 2010 to reach 25 percent by 2025. Of that total, 75 percent of the renewable energy must come from wind power.

Wind energy generated nearly 1,000 estimated jobs and over $18 million in revenue for the state and landowners. Interim benchmarks for renewables propelled Illinois’ wind market to seventh in the nation, according to Sierra Club Illinois Chapter.

Old-line Chicago manufacturers such as Finkl & Sons on the south side and Brad Foote Gear Works in Cicero are getting a lift from wind power by making components for the alternative-power industry.

According to the report “The Wind Energy Supply Chain in Illinois,” compiled by the Environmental Law and Policy Center, 104 companies in Illinois with more than 15,000 employees play a role in the solar-power industry, whether it’s making parts, mixing cement or providing legal, banking, engineering and accounting services for the industry.

ArcelorMittal is among the only manufacturers in Northwest Indiana involved in the renewable energy sector. The mill makes steel for wind mill towers.

“Illinois had all kinds of requirements, like the 25 percent (renewable electricity standard.) That gave them a real big boost. But we don’t have anything like that here,” said Bryant Mitol, a Valparaiso resident who works for Earth Solar Technologies of Indianapolis. “I think that’s really what has helped boost (development.) Because they’re serious about it.

“Here, the powers that be are still pushing for coal. In Ohio and Illinois, they’re making great strides, but here we are in Indiana. I think the coal lobby is just really, really strong here.”

Based on a survey and analysis, the Solar Foundation said Indiana ranks 10th in the nation for solar jobs with an estimated 3,400 solar jobs and 25 estimated solar firms. Indiana is one of only two states in the top 10 without a renewable energy standard.

Indiana has also attracted major wind projects, such as BP’s wind farm in Benton County. But that’s misleading, said Kharbanda from the HEC.

“The governor and other politicians will talk about the investment coming into our state without the renewable energy standard,” he said. “The problem with that argument is, the investments have been driven by the RES. They’ve either been driven by RES in other states, which Indiana wind is tapped to comply with, or they view it as an incremental tool. They’ll sort of lead legislators to inaccurately conclude there’s no need for a renewable energy standard.

“In the scheme of things, wind farms like BP are very impressive, but they only lead to 1 to 2 percent of our electricity use.”

A renewable energy standard is among the top priorities on environmentalists’ agenda for the upcoming legislative session.

Thomas Energy, Tar Sands

Via Yahoo News By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer – Mon Sep 13, 7:30 pm ET

Thomas Misc, Tar Sands

Thomas Environment, Tar Sands

The Other end of BP’s pipeline - From the Alberta TAR SANDS to BP’s Whiting Refinery.

via [ Democracy Now ] Indigenous Groups Lead Struggle Against Canada’s Tar Sands

Thomas Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

via [ Post Trib ] “Rainbow-Push Leader Leads BP Spill Protest” By Christin Nance Lazerus

Photo by Stephanie Dowell/Post-Tribune

As crews struggle to contain the largest oil spill in American history in the Gulf of Mexico, critics of BP are starting to turn up the heat.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson led a group of protesters on a march outside of BP’s Whiting refinery on Wednesday afternoon to focus attention on what he says is the lax environmental enforcement that allowed the Gulf oil spill to occur — and problems closer to home.

“We need the (Environmental Protection Agency) standards enforced,” Jackson said. “At this point, businesses look at EPA fines as the cost of doing business.

“This reckless behavior is a threat to us all,” the Rainbow-PUSH leader said.

About 20 pickets walked along the busy stretch of Indianapolis Boulevard, carrying signs emblazoned with “Spill Baby Spill?,” “We Want Clean Energy,” and “Don’t Pay the Bill for the Spill.”

Jackson and Sierra Club Illinois director Jack Darin criticized BP for its $3 billion expansion of the Whiting refinery, which could see an increase the pollution due to processing oil from tar sands.

“There is a tragedy occurring right here in our midst,” Jackson said. “We all deserve the right to breathe free.”

Many of the protesters belong to Greater First Church in East Chicago.

Bishop T. Lane Grant II criticized the air and wastewater permits approved for BP by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

“There’s no plan to ensure that BP wouldn’t continue violations,” Grant said.

East Chicago resident Tanya Moss said concern about the Gulf oil spill prompted her to act.

“We want to to make sure they take every safety precaution,” Moss said. “Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for their ‘oops,’ since they wouldn’t pay for my ‘oops’.”

Darin said he hopes this critical time prompts political leaders to action on planning a cleaner energy future.

“We’re well positioned to act,” Darin said.

“We have a president who is pointing in that direction, and the House passed an energy bill. It’s one of big things on senate’s agenda this summer.

“We want a future free of oil spills.”

Thomas Environment, Tar Sands

25-years-ago BP abandoned its professional training facilities in Robertsdale, donating the facilities to Calumet College, and moved to a 200-acre LEED certified campus in Naperville. They did so because they could no longer attract professionals to this location due to Quality of Life issues. Quality of Life issues they had a major hand in creating.

Today BP’s professional staff enjoy the healthy work environment of a green campus with ample buffering between office buildings and roadways, while residents adjacent to the BP’s refinery are not so fortunate. Today BP is constructing a whole new facility at their East Chicago / Whiting Refinery to refine the “No Good, Very Bad, Dirty” heavy sour crude from the Alberta Tars Sands and to do so they are constructing 6 cokers directly across the street from the Marktown Historic District where more than 120 children under the age of 18 live, play and sleep.

BP likes to refer to the project as a modernization or retooling project. This is an important distinction to them because to call it what is, a “new facility” or “new construction,” would trigger all sorts of regulatory reviews and permitting, including a new-source review requiring an environmental and health risk assessment. I am not certain if there has ever been a risk assessment done on the impacts the BP refinery has the neighboring communities. I don’t know if that is because they have been grandfathered in or what. I just know that new construction ought to trigger a new source review and that is not happening.

For labor purposes BP calls the project a “maintenance project.” Thus they bypass all sorts of labor rules in terms of pay, scheduling, and work conditions as would be the case for new construction. Let’s make this simple, if I tore down my house to construct a brand new home, I could not go to City Hall seeking a maintenance permit for the new construction. I would be required to seek the proper permits and follow requirements for new construction. This is just one way in which BP has been cutting corners here to save themselves costs. I can’t say what other cost cutting measures BP is making, but I do know they did not do this without the aid of regional leadership. I wonder what our regional leadership is thinking now as we learn more about the costs of BP practices to the gulf region.

This is a good environmental justice example of how benefits-without-risks are created and separated from risks-without-benefits in a free-market economy. Free-market corporations and present day land use policies have a very intentional consequent of accumulating wealth and benefits in one location while clustering risks and blight in another. All too often the geography of separation is as clear as the “Northshore” and “Southshore” designations.

It makes me wonder if anyone working in office complexes similar to the BP complex in Naperville feel any sense of culpability for the lives negatively impacted on the other side of their company’s production line. What about Kraft Foods? what about Grainger? what about Cargill? and U.S. Steel? and ArcelorMittal? Boeing? GATX? or Ryerson?

[ Wikipedia list of Corp HQ in the Chicago Met area ]

Compounding problems, BP extracted an additional $165 million in tax abatements from the mostly poor people of Marktown and East Chicago. They did this behind closed doors, and without a single public hearing, all while lecturing the region on “Good Government.” Despite efforts, residents, who pay the highest property taxes in the state at 7.4%, still do not know that they gave up $165 million to BP. BP accomplished this feat by spreading the wealth to voting districts outside the plume of negative externalities while taking advantage of their partnerships with corrupt local political enterprises under the plume. BP is well known for this form of philanthropic activity and I could go on about “to whom” and “how much” was given, but that will have to be for another post. Let these two examples suffice for now.

Three years ago a $25-million donation from BP capped Phase 1 of a three-part expansion and renovation campaign. Since 2002, BP had agreed to more than $125 million in state and regional legal settlements over pollution problems.

Art museums are often the beneficiaries of largess from corporations wishing to polish their sometimes less-than-gleaming image. (Cigarette, anyone?) Oops.

via [ LA Times ] BP Grand Entrance at LACMA looking not-quite-so-grand

In 2009 BP gave to Napperville for $1 an extremely expensive Hydrogen fueling station with multipliers of positive effects.

Thomas East Chicago Portrait Series, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Bloody Oil from Felix Gonzales on Vimeo.

Thomas Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

As you can see I have been a skeptic of the EPA”s recent challenge to BP’s air permit.

<fb comment> a small victory. The EPA has order Indiana to rewrite the permit, essentially discrediting Indiana’s ability to manage their environmental resources. All I see this doing is fortifying a poorly written permit against future disputes. In the end BP is the beneficiary of the action</fb comment>

Noah Hall, author of the Great Lakes Law blog is beginning to clear me of my skepticism.

via [ Great Lakes Law ]

Tar sands oil gives coal some competition for the title of dirtiest fuel.  From mining to refining to burning, tar sands oil is an environmental disaster.  The Great Lakes is becoming a center for refining imported tar sands oil, which comes from western Canada.  As a result, refinery pollution is threatening our water and our communities.  BP’s Whiting Refinery on the shores of Lake Michigan in Indiana has become a focal point in the legal fight to stop tar sands pollution in the region.  Environmental groups scored a victory earlier this month when the EPA objected to an Indiana permit for air pollution from the refinery.  Meleah Geertsma, an attorney and public health expert with the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago, was involved in the fight against the air pollution from the tar sands refinery, and wrote this guest post on the victory and what it means in the fight against tar sands pollution in the Great Lakes.

On October 16, in a move that could significantly improve air quality for the Great Lakes region, the U.S. EPA sent a clear message to the oil industry that the federal agency is serious about air pollution from refining – especially the processing of dirty Canadian tar sands crude. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on that day issued an order objecting to a permit granted by Indiana to BP’s Whiting Refinery, located on the shores of Lake Michigan. At the heart of Administrator Jackson’s order is a concern that numerous potential sources of air pollution are going uncounted and uncontrolled. And that the industry is ignoring or downplaying the air pollution impacts of processing the much heavier, dirtier Canadian tar sands crude, a crude that contains high levels of sulfur and toxic metals.

The BP operating permit was issued to enable a significant increase in the processing of heavy tar sands crude at BP’s Whiting, Indiana facility. However, the permit allowed BP to expand without installing so-called “best available control technology,” on the premise that increases in air pollution from the expansion would be balanced by decreases in pollution from the existing refinery. Such a trade-off of increases and decreases is referred to in air permitting as “netting.”

In response, several environmental groups and individual citizens filed a petition with U.S. EPA, asking the agency to object due to BP’s and the agency’s failure to count numerous potential sources of increased air pollution. Among these sources are increased operations of certain equipment needed to process larger amounts of Canadian crude, as well as greater levels of sulfur and toxics in the crude itself.

Great Lakes Law: Environmental groups and EPA step up the fight against tar sands oil refinery pollution in the Great Lakes.

Thomas East Chicago, Environment, Tar Sands, The Air I Breath

via [ Petropolis ]

Peter Mettler documents the metropolis of oil through aerial  images of the Tar Sands. These images are simultaneously beautiful and horrifying, showing the large flowing deposits of toxic chemicals released from bitumen mining, spill out ponds, atmospheric disturbances and massive quantities of carbon dioxide released into the air.  For anyone interested in gaining a visual perspective on the project, I would urge you to check out the film.

Stacks of Sulfur

[ Trailer ]

Thomas Environment, Tar Sands

Another video about the Tar Sands.

Canada’s Dirty Oil: breaking our addiction from Dirty Oil Sands on Vimeo.

Thomas Misc, Tar Sands

via [ h2oil ] :: previous post [ Alberta Tar Sands ]

Thomas East Chicago, Environment, Tar Sands

In business there is a saying “throwing good money after bad.”  The idea is that it is better to cut your losses and go with something else than to continue a losing strategy that drains your resources. for the energy sector it follows that it would be better to cut losses with oil and go with some other alternative, but like our banking sector, the U.S. government seems to have the same boneheaded belief that our commitment to oil is too large to give up on. But unlike the banking system, oil is a limited resource. At some point in the near future America has to move forward with an alternative resource. The question today is at what cost to the environment are we going to continue our relationship with oil? 

I found this article this morning about throwing good energy after bad, or clean after dirty. I suppose adding Palin’s name to the title is suppose to appeal to some obvious instinct.

via [ www.solveclimate.com ]

“Palin’s Pipeline: Clean Energy for the Lower 48 or Power for the Tar Sands?”

by Abby Schultz - Jun 29th, 2009

Environmentalists fear at least half of the relatively clean-burning Alaskan North Slope gas will end up fueling tar sands operations in Alberta, where the pipeline will end, instead of coming to the lower 48 states to replace carbon-intensive coal in power plants. The tar sands operations already consume about 20 percent of Canada’s natural gas, and they are expected to need as much as twice that by 2035.

Thomas Energy, Tar Sands