CHICAGO -- Chicago city vehicles would no longer use BP-issued gasoline credit cards until the company backtracks on plans to dump more pollutants into Lake Michigan under an order drafted by Alderman Edward Burke and advanced late last week by a pair of City Council committees, reported The Chicago Tribune.
Burke, chairman of the Finance Committee, said he would also like to take an extra step and bar three major banks that he said share corporate directors with BP from city bond deals unless the oil company changes its plans.
Indiana regulators in June issued a permit to BP, allowing it to increase pollutants dumped into Lake Michigan as part of the company's planned $3 billion expansion of its refinery in Whiting, Ind. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is supporting Indiana and BP, saying the plan complies with the Clean Water Act.
Earlier this week, Mayor Richard Daley said shoreline communities such as Chicago could band together and sue. Burke said the only thing that will get [BP's] attention is to hit it in the pocketbook.
Burke said the city has 97 BP gas credit cards, most of them used by the Police Department. He said his staff was still researching what other city business, such as bulk fuel purchases, the city may have with the company.
The order to cut off the gas-card business was approved unanimously during a joint public hearing of the Committees on Energy, Environmental Protection & Public Utilities, and Parks & Recreation, said the report. The measure will go to the full City Council in September.
Wendy Abrams, spokesperson for the city's Budget Department, told the newspaper of the $27 million the city spends on fuel a year, about $38,000 went to BP in 2006.
Burke also called on Chicagoans to boycott BP gas stations and products unless the company changes its plans, the Tribune reported.
Scott Dean, a spokesperson for BP, told the paper that the company is committed to the project, which would allow the refinery to produce an additional 620 million gallons of gasoline a year. We firmly believe that our project is safe for the lake, Dean said. It is an important project to modernize an important piece of infrastructure for Chicago and the Midwest.
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