Posted on 06/15/2005 9:36:34 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO – Staring at potential payouts in the billions of dollars, the U.S. oil industry is maneuvering to escape responsibility for cleaning up after MTBE, the now-banned toxic gasoline additive that has seeped into drinking water across the country.
If the campaign is successful, critics say taxpayers will be forced to pick up the unpaid bill.
Oil producers have attached so much importance to immunity from liability that the issue has taken a place right alongside opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and tax breaks as Congress crafts a broad new energy policy.
The House has already approved legislation sponsored by a powerful Texas Republican, Rep. Joe Barton, that would deliver what the industry wants, brushing aside protests from California water officials, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
However, the U.S. Senate is widely expected to withstand industry pressure as it takes up its own energy bill this week, shifting the showdown to a conference committee later this summer.
That could set the stage for a possible repeat of 2003 when an energy bill collapsed, partially over an impasse involving MTBE.
California officials contend that a vital source of funding to clean up groundwater contamination could vanish if the industry avoids liability.
"Any such provision would seriously undermine efforts to protect precious groundwater and surface water sources from the harmful effects of MTBE contamination and unfairly shift cleanup costs to taxpayers," Lockyer said in a letter of opposition.
Oil interests counter that it's not fair to punish them for complying with a 1990 congressional order to blend a smog-fighting additive into gasoline as part of amendments to the Clean Air Act. The industry chose to use Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether, or MTBE.
"This is, above all, an issue of fairness," Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, told a House committee in February.
"Any industry that acts as mandated by the federal government to meet a societal need – in this case, cleaner air and improved health – should not be victimized for doing what the government required it to do," he said.
A federal shield would make it much more difficult for water agencies to collect, but not impossible.
No figures are available nationally, but the opposing parties have tossed around wildly disparate cleanup estimates that range from $2 billion to $29 billion.
Most MTBE-related claims are based on defective-product liability law, which allows agencies to go after the producers of MTBE. If the industry is awarded immunity, communities may be armed only with difficult-to-prove negligence standards that would limit their targets to companies that own gas stations or independents, water agencies contend.
"I haven't heard of anyone who thinks the mom and pop gas stations will come up with millions to clean up this mess," said Dave Reynolds, who monitors MTBE issues for a coalition of California water agencies.
But with the additive no longer on the market, the threat to public health may be contained, according to Dave Spath, California's drinking water chief.
"The situation has stabilized . . . It has not reached as many drinking water sources as we once feared," Spath said. "That doesn't mean there isn't a lot of cleanup to be done."
In 2000, MTBE was detected at levels high enough to be a threat to health in 31 California counties, including five locations in San Diego County, according to the Department of Health Services.
"It's not a big local issue," said Ken Weinberg, director of water Resources for the San Diego County Water Authority.
Yet the authority opposes immunity for the industry because "it's not a good policy to exempt polluters from liability," Weinberg said.
Several California entities have filed legal claims against various producers, which prompted Republican leaders in the House to insert a retroactive enforcement date that could extinguish many cases.
Those seeking redress in court in include: Fresno, Riverside, Roseville, the Quincy Community Services district, California Water Services Co., the California-American Water Co. and a coalition of Sacramento-based agencies.
Under pressure to clear the skies, Congress had ordered oil producers to blend an oxygenate with gasoline to make gas burn cleaner. But, in a key decision at the heart of the latest controversy, Congress didn't mandate which oxygenate. By all accounts, the oil industry selected MTBE because it was readily available and cheaper than the limited supplies of ethanol or other alternatives.
"It was the oil companies that decided exactly what they were going to use," insisted Alan Lloyd, head of the California Environmental Protection Agency. By virtue of that decision, the industry should be held accountable for the pollution, Lloyd said.
The dangers of MTBE first came to light on a large scale in the Lake Tahoe and Santa Monica cases, which involved dozens of drinking water wells that had to be shut down. A coalition of water officials and environmentalists launched a nationwide crusade against MTBE. In California, then-Gov. Gray Davis banned the additive starting in 2004. Many other states soon followed. The pending federal legislation would ban the additive starting in 2015.
Oil interests say the only way to meet demands for cleaner-burning fuel at the time was to use MTBE.
"Congress knew MTBE was going to be used in huge volumes. Congress was fully aware of the potential problems," said Frank Maisano, an energy industry lobbyist.
That's my understanding also. At the very least, the gubmint approved it.
What they didn't tell you: originally gasoline, while obnoxious for a short period, was not a pollutant, as when released into the ground it was quickly reduced by natural processes to benign compounds.
Steel underground tanks would deteriorate by rusting and leak some gasoline into the ground, and those tanks would be detected and replaced. But this wasn't good enough for government money burners, everybody had to replace all the tanks immediately. No more worries, as the new tanks would be rustproof Fiberglas (plastic) construction, impervious to gasoline. The government idiots didn't bother to find out if the new tanks resisted ALCOHOL (MTBE and ethanol) which, of course, they didn't. And of course the pollutants in gasoline that DON'T break down in the environment are the late model additives and MTBE. So the new tanks began leaking real pollutants very quickly.
Bottom line the government mandated that we spend billions to go from no problem to huge problem. Enviroterrorists have been in government for a long time.
NAFTA. A ban of MTBE would be considered a barrier to trade and therefore be actionable by a WTO tribunal. Also, because our government is bent on merging Mexico, Canada and the USA into a single economic and political bloc, they don't want to mess with the MTBE producers in Canada. It might affect their ability to complete the merger.
FYI for now they are calling it the North American Community-- a mini-EU that will eventually expand to encompass the whole Western Hemisphere via CAFTA then the FTAA. There was a recent article posted about security and the North American Community--look it up if you're interested. Its an eye opener and very bad news for the future of the United States as a sovereign country.
Yep, I am not sure if we can ever fully recover from this massive waste of resources.
Not certain of this but - I believe that MTBE when burned with gasoline becomes airborne and when rain washes it to the ground it seeps in, resulting in groundwater pollution.
My understanding was that it was dispersed as a product of combustion and rained down as mentioned, but leaking underground storage tanks (called LUST in the hazmat/envirolaw industry) are possibly to blame as well.
Our elected officials swore an oath to abide by our constitution, which states that they're responsible to protect the populace from all threats, both foreign & domestic. This domestic threat to the health of the people is a life and death situation and this thumps all other agreements, especially foreign.
I'm certain that there must be language in the NAFTA plan which would nullify any agreement which would be destructive to the health & welfare of our nation. If not there certainly should be! I'm convinced that somewhere in that agreement there's an out that can be used to nullify an agreement, especially if there's a threat to the safety of our people.
thumps = trumps
Individual motorists at gas pumps spill an amazing amount of fuel just a few drops at a time, but MTBE does not break down. All those drips and splashes add up.
No one needs to have a leaky underground tank, and those went through inspections during the Clinton years, too, shutting down a lot of older gas stations where infrastructure upgrades were too expensive.
So let's beat up the BIG oil companies to pay for the actions of a government and the people it represents. /SARC
We will have $5.00 gasoline yet, imho.
In this context, I think I prefer "thumps".
It reminds me of Teddy's "big stick".
bill wattenberg of radio kgo san francisco used to scream himself silly over mtbe.
he said that the oil companies and the cal epa were in bed together, that employees moved back and forth, back and forth, for higher salaries.
he was on record for over a decade against mtbe, pointing out that it was a carcinogen.
I'm searching back in the mists of time, but I recall there was something about MTBE being a waste byproduct of the chemical industry and using it as a fuel oxygenator sort of killed two birds with one stone. Which reminds me of stories I heard about the east coast mafia who would (for a price) drive tankers of hazardous waste around the turnpikes with the spigot dripping until it's gone.
MTBE isn't a waste product. It has to be refined in a special process. The feed stream is a different "cut" from the cracking column, and one that really doesn't have as much commercial demand as others.
True, make the Californian citiizens pay for it. They are the ones that started it.
It was the EPA. Then the elected officials and unelected bureaucrats should be tried, fined and possibly jailed. The people of California are not culpable but the federal and state governments are.
A bureaucrat swinging from a gallows would send the right message in many many ways.
In China, they would use one bullet, and invoice the next of kin for the bullet.
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