MTBE on way out, but when?

By Patrick Hoge, Bee Capitol Bureau Copyright 1999 Sacramento Bee February 10, 1999

At one time, banning the gasoline additive MTBE was a cause championed by relatively few figures, like state Sen. Dick Mountjoy, R-Arcadia.

Now Sen. Don Perata, D-Alameda, says a consensus has developed among California decision-makers that MTBE is on its way out. The question is how quickly to force oil refiners to get rid of it.

"It's become an obvious public health issue," said Perata. He is one of five state legislators, including both Democrats and Republicans, with bills in the works that call for banning or phasing out MTBE.

Pressure is building in California and elsewhere in the nation to eliminate MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, from gasoline, with high-stakes lawsuits proliferating and discoveries of groundwater contamination increasing.

Gov. Gray Davis, meanwhile, faces a fast-approaching deadline to declare whether, on balance, MTBE poses a risk to public health or the environment.

Davis' predecessor, Gov. Pete Wilson, resisted taking action to limit the use of MTBE. The additive was introduced on a wide scale in California, starting in 1996, in an effort to make gasoline burn cleaner and cut air pollution.

Under a law passed by the Legislature in 1997, Davis must issue a finding on the risk posed by MTBE about 10 days after two public hearings scheduled for Feb. 19 and 23 in Southern California and Sacramento, respectively.

The hearings will focus on a recent University of California report that said California doesn't need MTBE to clean up its air and should gradually eliminate the chemical from its fuel supply.

Davis could order a ban on MTBE, rendering moot the legislative proposals. If he rejects an immediate ban or orders an MTBE phaseout, the bills could still be approved and sent to him.

Lurking in the background is the question of who will pay to clean up more than 10,000 California sites where MTBE has been found in groundwater.

At a hearing Tuesday, Assembly members sternly lectured state agency representatives about the failure to recognize more quickly the serious threat that MTBE poses to California's water. The hearing was called to discuss a state auditor's report, released in December, that said the state should have done more to stop the introduction and spread of MTBE.

"The problems that we have seen are not acceptable," Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, told various regulatory officials, including Walt Petit, executive director of the state Water Resources Control Board, and David Spath, chief of the state Health Department's division of drinking water and environmental management.

Lobbyists for the oil industry contend that quickly ridding California of MTBE would be catastrophic to the state's gasoline market, causing shortages and pump lines. "We're opposed to an immediate ban," said Jeff Wilson, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association. He said drastic action is not needed because there is no conclusive scientific evidence that MTBE is toxic to humans.

Such a go-slow approach was supported by a recent California Energy Commission report that recommended phasing out MTBE over a six-year period.

"If there was science on this that said it's proved (that MTBE is a human carcinogen), this stuff would be gone in a heartbeat," said Jim Spagnole, a state Environmental Protection Agency spokesman. Most purification plants can't remove the additive.

The Association of California Water Agencies has been pushing state Sen. Byron Sher, D-Palo Alto, to carry a bill providing for a relatively gradual phaseout.

"I do not believe that there is a high likelihood that it will be banned immediately or within the next 12 months," said Bob Reeb, the water association's legislative director. "The debate will fall on how quickly we can achieve eliminating it as an additive."

But the South Lake Tahoe Public Utility District, one of Reeb's member agencies, adamantly wants faster action -- and at least a local ban. And the city of South Lake Tahoe says it may impose a local ban if the state does not.

Since 1997, the South Lake Tahoe water agency has closed down 13 wells -- more than one-third of its total -- because of MTBE contamination. The agency is planning to spend millions of dollars soon to drill new wells and install pipelines to deliver water.

"We can't afford a three-year or two-year wait," said agency spokeswoman Dawn Forsythe, whose agency is suing numerous oil companies for damages. "The people don't want to drink MTBE with their coffee in the morning."

Azibuike Akaba, an environmental scientist at Communities for a Better Environment, a San Francisco-based group, also wants an immediate ban.

"I think the phaseout is a way for the corporations and state agencies to cover up their lack of oversight," said Akaba, whose group recently filed a lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from oil companies because of water contamination by gasoline components.

Perata says he wants an MTBE ban by Dec. 1 -- or a requirement that fuel pumps distributing MTBE-laced gasoline be labeled to inform customers and give them an opportunity to buy elsewhere.

But Western Petroleum spokesman Wilson said refiners in California are in a tough spot because they spent $ 4 billion changing equipment to allow for use of oxygenates, mostly MTBE, to satisfy federal clean-air requirements.

Leaking underground storage tanks should be less of a concern in the future because the federal government last December required the installation of "leak-proof" tanks, Wilson said.

Mountjoy called that "nonsense," saying newer tanks already have leaked, and there are other ways for MTBE to get into groundwater -- like gasoline spills.

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