Feinstein Urges Navy to Clean Up MTBE Spread

Sen. Dianne Feinstein urged the Navy on Monday to move quickly to clean up the spread of a gasoline additive that is leaking from underground storage tanks at the Port Hueneme naval base.

The California senator’s call for action follows an article in The Times last week reporting that the errant chemical MTBE, which has been seeping into ground water beneath the base since 1995, has now grown into a pollution plume one mile in length and about 500 feet wide.

At its current rate--it expands nearly a foot a day--officials estimate the contaminant will eventually rise to the surface and spill into Port Hueneme Harbor in about 18 months.

So far, the Navy has taken no action to halt the migrating plume, because doing so could undermine experiments the military is conducting to solve the MTBE pollution problem, an official said. Drinking water wells are not threatened by the Port Hueneme leak, the Navy maintains.

“It’s an ideal opportunity because we have this plume and it isn’t a threat to drinking water and it isn’t going to get to a drinking water resource,” Gail Pringle, environmental protection specialist for the base, said last week.

“In the concentrations we have, it is no risk to the ecosystem; it’s not going to kill fish or birds or injure swimmers. It’s an opportunity to test the technologies here and use them at sites where there really is a problem with drinking water,” she said. Navy officials, caught up in rescue and recovery efforts of a downed Alaska Airlines jet off the coast of Anacapa Island, were unavailable for comment late Monday.

Feinstein said the chemical, methyl tertiary butyl ether, does not readily decompose and can move quickly through soil and gravel.

“When it does reach water, since it smells like turpentine and tastes like paint thinner, it makes water undrinkable,” she said in a written statement. “Therefore, I cannot accept the view reported in the article that ‘since no wells are threatened’ and ‘no one is drinking the contaminated water,’ it does not need to be cleaned up.”

The chemical was added in increased concentrations to most U.S. gasoline in 1996 in an effort to produce cleaner-burning fuel. But the use of more MTBE contaminated drinking water supplies nationwide.

MTBE has contaminated ground water at more than 10,000 sites in California, Feinstein said. It has caused cancer in lab animals and is considered a potential human carcinogen. Gov. Gray Davis recently signed an executive order banning its use by the end of 2002.

The senator’s action follows recent pressure from the state Water Quality Control Board directing the Navy to prepare measures to clean up the pollution.

The Navy base has so far resisted those efforts and has instead proposed further study of the pollution mass.