October 18, 2013|By Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune reporter
South Side environmental activists take pictures of a barge carrying petroleum coke waste on the Calumet River last month. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune)
Just south of the Chicago Skyway bridge, a dusty byproduct of the Canadian oil boom is piling up in huge black mountains along the Calumet River.
More is on the way. A lot more.
By the end of the year, the oil giant BP is expected to complete work on new equipment that will more than triple the amount of petroleum coke produced by its Whiting refinery on Lake Michigan. The project will turn the sprawling Indiana plant into the world's second-largest source of petroleum coke, also known as petcoke, and Chicago into one of the biggest repositories of the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste.
BP this week confirmed that all of its petcoke is shipped a few miles across the state border to sites in the East Side and South Deering neighborhoods. Residents say black clouds of dust blow off uncovered piles of petcoke and coal in the area so frequently that people are forced to keep their children inside with the windows closed.
"You can't have a picnic outside because you are going to get a mouthful of black dust," said Lilly Martin, whose backyard deck on Mackinaw Avenue offers a view of one of the coke piles a few blocks away. "It's so bad we have to power-wash the house every week to wash it off."
In response to complaints from neighborhood groups, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan are investigating. The Illinois EPA said it is reviewing permits for the storage piles "to determine if they are appropriate to each facility's current activities and if special conditions are needed to address site-specific concerns."
If the piles were at the Whiting refinery, BP would be obligated to enclose them under the terms of its Clean Air Act permit and a federal legal settlement. But the storage sites in Chicago aren't required to comply with the same stringent air pollution regulations, which are intended to reduce hazards from lung-damaging particulate matter.
The amount of petcoke generated by Whiting and other U.S. refineries has steadily increased during the past decade as the industry processes more Canadian oil that is thicker and dirtier than many other grades.
BP will produce more than 2.2 million tons of petcoke a year at Whiting, up from about 700,000 tons before the refinery was overhauled to process oil from the tar sands region of Alberta.
Pumping crude oil through a coker is one of the first steps in the refining process. Exposing it to intense heat draws out lighter oil that is further processed into gasoline and other fuels, leaving petroleum coke as a spongy residual concentrated with carbon, sulfur and heavy metals.
Most petcoke is shipped overseas and used as industrial fuel. Because petcoke emits more smog-forming sulfur dioxide and heat-trapping carbon dioxide than coal, U.S. regulations tightly control the amount that can be burned without elaborate pollution controls.
About five days' worth of petcoke can be stored at the Whiting refinery, BP said in an email response to questions. Under the company's federal permit and consent decree with the U.S. EPA, the waste is surrounded by 40-foot walls; an enclosed conveyor and loading system is equipped with wind screens and water sprayers to keep dust down.
"BP Whiting is complying with its permit regarding coke handling at the refinery," said Scott Dean, a company spokesman.
Such elaborate storage is temporary, though, and Dean said it is up to the companies that operate off-site storage terminals to comply with applicable environmental laws.
All of the petcoke from Whiting eventually is sent by train, truck or barge to sites on Chicago's Southeast Side owned by KCBX Terminals. The company is controlled by Charles and David Koch, wealthy conservative industrialists who back groups that challenge the science behind climate change and oppose many environmental regulations.
Last year, KCBX bought the larger of the two sites — between 108th and 111th streets on the east side of the Calumet River — from a subsidiary of Detroit-based DTE Energy. As part of the deal, the company obtained exclusive rights to store petcoke from the nearby BP refinery. The other storage site is across the river just south of 100th Street.
During warmer months, KCBX uses water cannons to spray down piles of petcoke and coal on the properties, records show. Paul Baltzer, a spokesman for Koch Companies Public Sector LLC, said the company is spending more than $10 million to upgrade its facilities, "including improvements to our dust suppression capabilities."
But in letters to the Illinois EPA, the company said "it is not feasible" to cover the piles because "stockpile locations and usage patterns are constantly changing."
"KCBX puts a priority on regulatory compliance and managing operations in a manner that protects the health and safety of employees, the community, and the environment," Baltzer said in a statement.
