EPA: BP Oil Spill Affected Half-Mile Of Lake Michigan

The malfunction at BP’s Indiana refinery has caused great damage with a half-mile spill along the Chicago shoreline.

The spill reported Monday afternoon by BP appears to have been contained by company crew members who deployed absorbent booms around the spill site, said Mike Beslow, on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5.

BP spokesman Scott Dean said the area affected by the spill was a cove along the Lake Michigan at the company’s sprawling Whiting refinery, which covers about 1,400 acres.

The spill is about 20 miles southeast of downtown Chicago but was not expected to pose any threat to municipal water supplies that draw on the lake’s water, Beslow said.

By: Cheston Catalano

Cheston Catalano is a Kentucky-based journalist whose work has been featured in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle. He is a long-time contributor to Liberaland.