Michael Hawthorne

Indiana regulators have granted BP another exemption from environmental standards, this time relaxing rules requiring a sharp drop in harmful soot pollution from the company's Whiting oil refinery. The decision by the Indiana Department of...

In the fall of 1970, a chemistry professor in upstate New York reached into his pantry, grabbed a can of tuna and, on a hunch, tested it for mercury. What he found stunned him: levels of the toxic metal far above U.S. safety limits. Embarrassed...

Insisting that they cannot stop BP from dumping more toxic waste into Lake Michigan, federal officials will instead try to persuade the oil company on Wednesday to finance other projects that would help clean up the lake. At the behest of Mary Gade,...

Indiana is moving to scrap, relax or omit limits on toxic chemicals and heavy metals dumped into a Lake Michigan tributary by the sprawling U.S. Steel Corp. mill in Gary, according to environmental lawyers and former federal regulators who have reviewed a...

BP is facing new questions about its Whiting refinery from federal environmental regulators, who accused the company Thursday of starting a project to process heavy Canadian oil three years before it obtained the necessary permit. The U.S....

Although the federal government ordered states more than a decade ago to dramatically limit mercury discharges into the Great Lakes, the BP refinery in northwest Indiana will be allowed to continue pouring small amounts of the toxic metal into Lake...

Illinois officials are taking steps to ensure people aren't drinking contaminated water, including proposing criminal penalties for misleading the public about the source of water flowing from their taps. In response to a Tribune investigation that...

Crestwood's mayor on Saturday tried to assure his south suburban town its drinking water is safe as an outraged and skeptical standing-room-only crowd shouted him down and demanded to know why local officials secretly used a polluted well for more than...

Two thin streams of wastewater pour constantly from spigots used to monitor environmental conditions at the BP oil refinery in Whiting. Joe Morrison, manager of the facility's water treatment plant, quickly fills two glass bottles to show the...

Ann Muniz would like to forget the days of drinking bottled water and taking short showers with the windows open. Health officials suggested taking those unusual steps eight years ago when they told Muniz and nearly 750 other homeowners in an...

The Obama administration is mulling whether to force dry cleaners to phase out the cancer-causing chemical that soaked into the soil behind a Crestwood business and is still used in tens of thousands of shops nationwide. Health experts have known for...

Federal agents raided government offices in south suburban Crestwood on Wednesday, less than two weeks after a Tribune investigation revealed the village had secretly pumped drinking water from a polluted well for more than two decades. Acting on a...