By Michael Hawthorne

Rebuffing bipartisan pressure from members of Congress, the Bush administration’s top environmental regulator on Tuesday declined to stop the BP refinery in northwest Indiana from dumping more pollution into Lake Michigan.

Stephen Johnson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he saw nothing wrong with the permit Indiana regulators awarded in June to BP, the first company in years allowed to increase the amount of toxic chemicals pumped into the Great Lakes.

As part of a $3 billion expansion of its Whiting, Ind., refinery, the nation’s fourth largest, BP won permission to release more ammonia and suspended solids into the lake. Indiana regulators also gave BP until 2012 to meet a stringent federal standard for mercury pollution set by the EPA in 1995.

Even though the federal government has been pushing for more than three decades to eliminate pollution in the Great Lakes, the EPA did not object to the BP permit.

“We want to work collaboratively with companies, including BP and others, to do what we can to continue to improve the condition of the Great Lakes,” Johnson told the Tribune in a brief interview following a speech at the Chicago Cultural Center. “In this case, it’s my understanding that Indiana issued a permit that is fully compliant with the Clean Water Act. As an agency we need to honor that permit.”

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