GOP Lawmakers Call for Ban on Gas Additive

With the fight over clean air heating up in the Legislature, a half-dozen Republican lawmakers Tuesday called for a ban on a key ingredient used in the new cleaner burning gasoline.

Led by Sen. Richard Mountjoy (R-Arcadia), the Republican lawmakers contradicted top state officials and environmentalists, who say that the additive, MTBE, has helped clean the state’s air.

The GOP lawmakers joined a coalition of conservative talk show hosts and others, including three scientists, to proclaim that the gasoline additive is fouling drinking water and threatening Californians’ health.

Mountjoy said that state air management officials are using Californians as “guinea pigs.”

Long a nemesis of environmentalists, Mountjoy pushed legislation to ban the use of MTBE, and make it a misdemeanor to produce or distribute it. The bill (SB 521) stalled in the Senate Transportation Committee late Tuesday.

“MTBE is a terrible choice because it makes people sick, damages cars and pollutes our water,” Mountjoy said.

Opponents, however, discounted claims that MTBE causes cancer and other ailments.

“It’s really baloney,” said Joan Denton, of the California Air Resources Board. Noting that MTBE has been studied extensively, Denton and other experts say the reformulated gasoline has made dramatic reductions in smog in Southern California and elsewhere in the state.

Environmentalists and the oil industry, crediting MTBE with reducing the highly toxic carcinogen benzene, called for the passage of legislation by Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) aimed at preventing MTBE from leaking into water supplies.

Her bill (AB 592) would require more inspections of underground gasoline storage tanks.

“Contrary to talk radio hype, MTBE is an important and useful chemical,” said Kuehl, whose bill was approved by an Assembly committee on Tuesday. “The critical concern is to keep it out of the water supply.”

The skirmishes Tuesday amounted to the latest round in a fight fueled in large part by conservative talk show hosts over attempts by the state to reduce smog in California.

In an effort to comply with strict federal clean air requirements, state officials required the introduction of reformulated gasoline last year, and also are cracking down on polluting cars in a program called Smog Check II.

If the state fails to obtain the reductions from cars, it will have to seek more emission reductions from factories, something industry opposes. This year, the oil industry and the powerful state Chamber of Commerce are trying to shore up support for the reformulated gasoline and Smog Check II.

In the late 1980s, the California Air Resources Board estimated that benzene emissions resulted in 89 cancer cases annually, while another component of the old gas, 1,3-butadiene, resulted in 34 cancer cases annually.

The reformulated gasoline was designed to all but eliminate benzene and 1,3-butadiene, but in a side effect, the new gas has resulted in an increase in formaldehyde--which results in three cancer cases a year, the state estimates.

Mountjoy produced scientists who claimed that MTBE could cause cancer in humans because it has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals--a claim disputed by scientists produced by the MTBE industry trade group, the Oxygenated Fuels Assn.

While MTBE is not as toxic as benzene, it has been turning up in drinking water, most notably in San Monica, where underground gas tanks leaked and seeped into underground wells.

Santa Monica was forced to close its wells, and has filed a suit against Mobile Oil seeking payment for the replacement water and cleanup costs. MTBE also has been detected in reservoirs, including Shasta in Northern California.

“It won’t be long before we can’t drink the water in California,” said Jodi Waters, one of Mountjoy’s backers who represented a group called Oxy-Busters, which has surfaced elsewhere in the country to battle the use of MTBE.