Group to Sue for Ban on Gas Additive

Targeting the largest oil companies doing business in California, the environmental group Communities for a Better Environment is filing suit today to ban the gasoline additive MTBE and force oil companies to clean up drinking water sources contaminated with the additive, a suspected carcinogen.

The lawsuit, to be filed in Superior Court in San Francisco, accuses more than a dozen oil companies of blending gasoline with MTBE knowing of its hazards and knowing that many of the underground tanks where it would be stored are damaged and would leak. Oil companies in the past have insisted that they produced MTBE carefully and have pointed out that while the additive poses health risks, they are no worse than the risks posed by gasoline itself.

Companies being sued include Unocal, Chevron, Mobil, Arco, Texaco, Shell, Tosco and Exxon.

At least one company, Tosco, has begun substituting ethanol for MTBE in some locations.

Besides enhancing performance, MTBE is a key ingredient of cleaner burning gasoline. According to the California Air Resources Board, using MTBE in gasoline has eliminated an amount of carbon monoxide equivalent to removing 3 million to 4 million of the 24 million gas-powered vehicles on state roads.

But when MTBE gets into water, the highly soluble additive is believed to be a health hazard that may cause cancer. MTBE has made its way into lakes and reservoirs from motorboat exhaust and has leaked from gas station storage tanks into well water.

Over the past few years, discovery of the additive has forced the closure of drinking water wells in communities including Santa Monica and South Lake Tahoe.

“On the whole, public water supplies have not been affected,” said Fran Vitulli of the California Water Resources Control Board. But Vitulli said there are widespread indications of underground leakage from tanks that could eventually move into ground water.

The MTBE issue is being watched particularly carefully in Orange County because residents depend more heavily on ground water for drinking supplies than in most areas of Southern California.

To date, no MTBE has been detected in Orange County drinking water supplies, said James Van Haun, associate general manager at the Orange County Water District, which supplies water to 2 million of the county’s 2.7 million residents. The district is doing extensive monitoring for the chemical.

But water officials are concerned that MTBE has been found in some shallow aquifers that traditionally have not been used for drinking water. It also has been detected in high amounts in test wells at some gasoline service stations.

Water officials worry that the chemical eventually could migrate into much deeper ground water that supplies drinking water to county residents.

“It could be an indicator that it could migrate in the future to the lower potable drinking water zones,” Van Haun said.

The state has set a Dec. 22 deadline for all gas stations with underground tanks installed before 1984 either to replace them or upgrade them, Vitulli said. Of 62,000 tanks in the state, 55% have been replaced so far, she said.

Gas stations that don’t meet the deadline will not be able to accept more deliveries of gas. “We will have gas stations that have to cease operations,” Vitulli said.

MTBE is an oxygenate, so named because it boosts the oxygen content of gasoline. By federal law, oxygenates must be added to gasoline in places that don’t meet federal clean air standards. Such “non-attainment areas” include California’s most heavily populated regions.

The petroleum industry has long argued that it could produce clean-burning fuel without oxygenates if Congress would only repeal the law--a contention that some environmentalists have disputed.

But as long as the law is in place, industry representatives in California argue that MTBE, which is a byproduct of the gasoline refining process, is the most practical and readily available oxygenate.

MTBE opponents, who argue that the chemical, in addition to its impact on ground water, can damage engines and cause fires, have called for replacing the chemical with additives derived from ethanol--ordinary alcohol. But industry officials have said that is impractical.

“Ethanol works, but it is not sufficiently available to meet the demand in California,” said a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn.

Times staff writer Deborah Schoch in Orange County contributed to this story.