The first question and decision was whether or not to put an oxygenate in gasoline to make it burn better in the cylinder and reduce pollution. And the universal consensus was yes.
Then the next question was which oxygenate. The Midwest went with ethanol and CA and other states went with mtbe, which was produced in a refinery from waste products. A new product.
It was the O&G industry/refiners who were pushing mtbe.
There may have been, as you say, some leaky pipelines but the real problem was that CA did an inadequate job of inspecting buried gasoline tanks. Gasoline is not water soluble so a leaky tank is not a big problem. But when you put water soluble mtbe in the gasoline , it migrates fast and far
Well of course it was! The stuff was cheaper and they had been paying big bucks to get rid of the toxic stuff and this idea saved them that expense, too!
There's nothing wrong with my memory! I was just trying to make a quick comment about the ghastly effect of the threat of litigation and the milking of the legal system by these NGO litigating parasites who threat and switch!!!
If I were to write a book in response to each thread you'd complain about that even more!!! (Next time don't be so fast and loose with the aspersions, thanks.) I've never poked you like that before so don't start with me. (at least not that I remember)(grin)