Pork for the Corn Crowd

Big agriculture is lobbying President Bush to make a $1-billion-a-year decision that makes no sense, that could add to the cost of gasoline in California and might even cause gas shortages. Of all the pork-barrel boondoggles that have emanated from Washington over the years, this one would rank among the worst.

Bush is torn between the farmers on one side of this issue and his friends in big oil on the other. The late betting in Washington is that Bush will side with the farmers.

The agriculture lobby wants Bush to require California to add the corn-based substance ethanol to the state’s gasoline as a replacement for MTBE, an additive intended to reduce air pollution but which also polluted groundwater. It is being phased out by order of Gov. Gray Davis.

But everyone, except the farm lobby, says there is no reason to require California gasoline to contain ethanol. Since oxygenates such as MTBE and ethanol were first required in 1990, the oil companies have developed clean-burning lines of gasoline that fully meet state and federal air standards, without ethanol.

The oil companies have been joined by environmental groups and the California congressional delegation in opposing ethanol. The California Environmental Protection Agency and the state Air Resources Board support the oil companies. The National Academy of Science says ethanol is not needed.

In 1990, Congress adopted amendments to the Clean Air Act that required the addition of an oxygenate to gasoline to meet clean air standards in the smoggiest areas of the country. The choices were MTBE or ethanol. Ethanol was used in the Midwest, and MTBE was dominant in California until recent years when it began contaminating ground water supplies after leaking from gasoline storage tanks.

With the new “reformulated” gasolines available, the state of California petitioned the federal EPA for a waiver of the outdated rule requiring the use of ethanol if the state no longer added MTBE.

Midwestern corn growers see in California a market for 580 million gallons of ethanol a year, The Times’ Richard Simon reported. Only a few million gallons of ethanol are produced in California now. The farm interests fear that if California wins a waiver, other states will seek it too, shrinking the pork-barrel bonanza even more.

A White House decision is said to be imminent, possibly as part of Bush’s energy program to be unveiled in St. Paul, Minn., Thursday. If Bush insists on propping up the Corn Belt ethanol industry, let him just pay the money. There is no reason why California motorists should shell out an extra $1 billion a year for an additive they don’t want and don’t need.