BP Factory in Whiting Indiana

You have written this well. You suggested a link exchange at blog catalogue for my site http://anewgreenearth.com and I am off now to add your link. Look forward to having a link on your site, best wishes, The Artist

It certainly seems like you went out of your way to defend BP…not saying I am against them really…however, whether or not they are within the regulations for state and federal…any authorization that allows more pollution to be released into our environment regardless of whether or not it is considered "safe" by some guidelines, is not a good thing at all. Our environment has suffered far too much for too long, and our standard of living will not hold out either. Changes need to be made to help protect the planet. BP's new plant is not helping the problem but contributing to it, regardless of whether they are dumping sludge, silt, or ammonia that has been properly balanced for an acceptable pH level.

Uh okay…is I suppose BP has a right to defend itself…seeing as it spends so much advertising dollars into portraying itself as an environmental company…but come on…just how environmental can an oil company be? Yes you can minimize your environmental effects and I am sure they are better than all the others in a certain degree…but in all reality, I would rather see oil companies taking their massive profits and investing in the future…because we all know oil won't be around forever. Pollution needs to stop, we need oil alternatives……honestly, I say who cares about this Indiana incident…BP is getting what they want anyways. It's not like there profits are going to shoot down the drain…people still need oil to drive around in their cars.

BP is quickly loosing friends.Congress doesn't like them increasing waste discharges into Lake Michigan and public outrage is growing.Alaska is mad at them for their oil pipeline closure which reduced state revenue by approx. $500 million and caused environmental damage. Texas is pissed because of the 15 deaths and 450+ injuries from the oil refinery explosion that caused huge damages.Shareholders are outraged that the companies profits are being reduced because management failed to maintain and modernize its pipelines and refineries causing huge damage and liability expenses. Large deferred capital investments are projected to severely pinch short term profits.(They were so outraged they booted the longtime CEO last month)Russia just took back an lucrative BP oil field claiming the company was mismanaging the project and causing excessive environmental damage.Policy makers and national defense officials are concerned national security has been placed at risk with BP's North American refinery interruptions and oil pipeline shutdowns.You would think agreeing to expand a waste water treatment plant would be quickly accepted to put this Lake Michigan conflict behind them.

Ask these politicians ("our leaders" scary) "Do you even know what sludge is? No one is dumping sludge. If you want to use the word sludge cause it sounds cool then keep on going." I am telling you man, this is a war of words and not truths. I am trying to show what I am figuring out… the politicians, media, NGOs are just saying whatever will get you and I ticked enough to support them and donate money to them and collect email addresses for them. Sure BP is putting ammonia and suspended solids into the lake but so is every other recalmation facility. The media and poiliticians are calling it sludge like it is some black gunk… I did some research and this is not the case. this is not what I am standing for. I want a clean lake, but I can no longer support those who are leading this charge because they are misleading me.I want a clean lake and that means I want all these facilities including Chicago's and Milwaukees and the people that fertilize their lawns with ammonia to meet standards that will hopefully be set at zero for say 2010 or something reasonable….That way maybe someone can start a business to build the technology.The last time the beach was closed was because of e-coli…. I searched and searched google and found out that the BP facility has never closed a beach like those who got me to sign the petition claimed. we need to voice our views, but please ensure they are truly our views and not the person that cries wolf.Sure BP is an energy company. They are not trying to solve our environmental problems overnight, but are trying to solve the problem. More than I can say now about our politicians. Companies have to make money to be stay in business to reinvest into green projects like bio fuels…what do you think that companies can just invest in non-profitable ventures – look at the internet bubble. BP has to balance long and short term goals otherwise there is no long term. I learned this in B-school. Atlease BP is doing something … I think I got mad at first because I expect more from BP … but now I realize atleast they are doing something. What the heck is everyone else doing.What do yu think comapnies do with the money they make? Sure they pay salaries and sometime high ones, but they mainly reinvest the money into projects or give the money back to the owners like you and me who own mutual funds. There is not a room full of people jumping in piles of money. I looked at my mutual funds and realized I am the owner of many companies who may be adding to global warming and at the same time are trying to change things.This is a tought thing for us to comprehend and the media and politicians know this.Why aren't we complaining to the fertilizer copanies, to the city for putting salt on the roads, to the elctric companies who light our homes… oh because we need that stuff and that is just the price we have to pay for now… while we develop alternatives… maybe we should just say no more elctricty until we can have no emissions. Then we will be in the dark… just like I have figured out our politicans like to keep us so they can turn on one light and say over here over here "Listen believe me this is what is true (even though I did not thinking on it – but I know it will get you on my side).As I type I can't believe what I am writing, but I have realized what is going on.

Sure Scott lets just send more jobs and more "sludge" to the third world. It seems we American's are so interested in the quality of the environment that we are on a quest to send any process that makes polution to another country so that we can claim that our country is environmentally aware and clean. Well, what comes around does go around. It does not matter where you send it, eventually it comes back to you. People in California and the West Coast breath air that comes form all the over on the other side of the Pacific (from China) that is laden with all kinds of polutents that go into all the products that we all but at Wall-Mart, Best Buy, Target and other big box stores. As if air quality in L.A. was not bad enough. Nothing is free. If want out air and water to be clean shipping our dirty manufacturing problems to the third world is not the answer. We don't get a cleaner environment in the long run and all those working class people that the left seems to be interested in courting continue to loose the vital manufacturing jobs they depend on for their livelyhoods. Let me ask you: do you drive a car that burns some kind of fuel (or gets its energy form a power plant), do you own a computer, is there anything made of plastic in your house and are you ready and willing to sacrifice any of that so that some one in the third world (and eventually all of us) can live in a cleaner world? If not then how about we give BP some room to to business. I know that I am not ready to give up any of these things. Most of us aren't. I've been to some of these "Third World" countries you talk about. The conditions in many of them in regard to polution and the human condition are terrible. We used to have some of those kinds of conditions here, until we began to send it all over there. We need to do more of our own manufacturing and processing again. That way we can be reminded of just how much our American way of life really costs (you know: the real cost of doing business).