At Last, 52 Oars at Once

With 52 members, California’s delegation to the House of Representatives is by far the nation’s largest. The diverse contingent represents extremes of geography, personality and political ideological. The group is noted for its inability to unify behind legislation to benefit California, in part because the state’s regions have such conflicting interests.

Ethanol, however, has brought the state’s congressional team together in uncommon unity. All 52 members are co-sponsoring legislation that would exempt the state from a federal requirement that California gasoline contain an oxygen additive to make it burn cleaner.

There are now two approved oxygenates, ethanol and methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE. California has been using MTBE, but Gov. Gray Davis has banned it as of the end of next year because the persistent chemical has found its way into ground-water supplies and forced the closure of water wells in some areas, including Lake Tahoe and Santa Monica.

Davis petitioned President Bush and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to exempt the state from the oxygenate requirement, since sophisticated new gasolines meet federal standards without any oxygenate additive. Last month, the Bush administration flat-out rejected California’s request. Unless the rejection is overturned by Congress, California motorists will have to spend an additional $450 million a year for a gasoline additive they don’t need and don’t want. In fact, a draft EPA document written in December recommended that California get its waiver.

The Bush decision makes no scientific sense or national economic sense. But politics, that’s another matter. Ethanol is made mostly from corn, and corn is grown mostly in the Midwest. That’s also where the big ethanol processing plants are. Bush surely wants to help congressional Republicans in the Farm Belt swing states, and surely wants to snub California for its rejection of him in last year’s election.

House members from the Midwest were delighted with the ethanol order and will vigorously fight the California bill, HR 2270. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has introduced a similar bill, S 947, in the Senate. But a big congressional battle over ethanol is unnecessary. Bush should consider the rare unity of the California delegation and grant the waiver himself. After all, even the oil refiners have joined with environmental groups in supporting a waiver.

California didn’t favor Bush last year, but he shouldn’t write the state off for 2004, and he shouldn’t write off the state’s 52-member House delegation. After all, that figure exactly equals the combined House delegations from the corn-producing states Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Missouri.