As we recently noted, ten members of the Illinois congressional delegation, led by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, sent a letter to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency on March 27 requesting a public hearing on BP's effort to increase emissions at its refinery in Whiting, Indiana. This is an important issue for Illinois residents, particularly those in Chicago and the south suburbs, as the Whiting plant lies along Lake Michigan, only 20 miles east of the border. And the lawmakers' attempt to slow down the permit process and allow for more input from Illinoisans is commendable.

But I just reviewed the Lexis-Nexis database and found no reports on the letter by a major Illinois media outlet.

A few Google searches didn't yield much either: just this single March 28 article on the lawmakers' request from the Post-Tribune's Gitte Laasby. (The Post-Tribune, by the way, isn't even an Illinois outlet; it's a Sun-Times Group newspaper that covers Northwest Indiana.)

The BP issue certainly deserves more coverage than this.

UPDATE: Some more digging uncovered a March 30 article by AP's Rick Callahan that briefly mentioned the letter in the final graf. It's not clear whether any Illinois papers published the AP report in their print editions