CHICAGO, Aug 16 (Reuters) British oil company BP, facing criticism of a plan to dump more pollutant

CHICAGO, Aug 16 (Reuters) British oil company BP, facing criticism of a plan to dump more pollutants into the Great Lakes, on Wednesday defended a permit for its Indiana refinery outside Chicago but said it would consider alternatives.

A senior BP executive clarified the company's position at a meeting sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and attended by regulators, environmentalists and politicians.

''I believe the current permit protects the water quality as it is,'' said Stephen Elbert, vice chairman of BP's U.S. unit, BP America. ''We are committed to look at options to do more.'' Meanwhile, an environmental group, the Alliance for the Great Lakes, filed a petition asking Indiana's Office of Environmental Adjudication to suspend the permit because of inadequate public scrutiny.

The state of Indiana granted the permit in June to BP's 405,000 barrel-a-day Whiting refinery, which is to undergo a $3.8 billion renovation scheduled to be completed in 2011.

The refinery will be able to boost the amount of ammonia it can discharge daily into Lake Michigan by 54 percent from current levels to 1,584 pounds and of suspended solids (containing fine particles of metals and others minerals) by 35 percent to 4,925 pounds.

The EPA has reviewed Indiana's permit and agreed it was below federal limits.

But other critics, including Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat, say there are numerous methods in use at other refineries, such as additional filtering of waste water, that would cut pollution from the BP refinery that the company has not considered.

Another outspoken critic of the refinery's permit, U.S.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat, said the EPA's review should have found that it violated the U.S. Clean Water Act.

''I will circulate a letter among members of Congress to institutional investors of BP that there are consequences ...

for a company that advertises itself one way and acts another way,'' Emanuel added, without offering specifics.

BP's marketing campaign promotes its investments in alternative energy and efforts to protect the environment.

REUTERS SZ VP0528