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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Kerry's recent campaign emphasis on the gasoline additive MTBE may have puzzled New Hampshire outsiders, but it certainly helped in the primary.
Jan 29, 2004 | Folks who paid close attention to the speeches of New Hampshire primary victor John Kerry in recent weeks would have noticed an emphasis on MTBE -- a gasoline additive that makes fuel burn more efficiently and cleanly, but is carcinogenic and widely known to contaminate groundwater. To outsiders, this may have seemed like a strange environmental issue to spotlight -- why not focus on global warming, say, or species extinction?
But MTBE is an issue with considerable political resonance -- not only inside the Beltway, where it was the major sticking point that stymied passage of Bush's energy bill last year, but also in New Hampshire, a state that has been disproportionately hit with MTBE contamination in its drinking water, lakes and rivers.
New Hampshire considers its contamination problem so bad, in fact, that in October, the state sued 22 MTBE producers, claiming that the fuel they sold was a "defective product" that has spoiled state waters. The state demanded that the companies reimburse it for the millions of dollars shelled out to investigate and crack down on MTBE pollution.
Kerry has encouraged the state's efforts: During a recent stop in Salem, N.H., a town struggling with MTBE contamination, Kerry elicited hearty applause when he declared, "As president, I will stand up for the principle of polluter pays and I will stand with states like New Hampshire who are seeking reimbursement for the environmental damage caused by powerful corporations. And in a Kerry administration, we will ban MTBE -- for good -- and for the good of America's families!"
But Kerry wasn't the only one who jumped on the issue. Last week, in the lead-up to the New Hampshire presidential primaries, Bush's EPA lobbed a cherry bomb into the MTBE debate, promising to accept a preliminary version of New Hampshire's request to be exempted from a federal program under the Clean Air Act that requires gasoline to contain fuel additives that make it burn more cleanly. MTBE is the primary or sole additive used in New Hampshire and a number of other states.
Bush critics viewed the move as an effort to neutralize one of the Democrats' issues in the primary campaign, and sensed other motives as well. "This is one of the most blatantly political decisions I have ever seen from the EPA for a number of reasons," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of Clean Air Trust, "not the least of which is that the EPA rejected a similar request made in 1999 by then-Gov. Gray Davis [D] in the state of California for a waiver from the [fuel-additive] requirement."
The EPA says that California failed to come up with a viable alternative plan to offset the air pollution that MTBE prevents. But the pollution-offset program proposed by New Hampshire seems half-baked at best, according to O'Donnell. "Their plan seems to be very vague ... a bizarre solution" that calls for emission reductions from consumer products such as paint and hair spray to make up for increased emissions from autos, he said.
Enviros also argued that the EPA decision would do little to alleviate New Hampshire's MTBE-related problems. Very few gasoline suppliers are making non-MTBE fuel blends that could be easily piped to New Hampshire, according to Kent Finemore of the air resources division of New Hampshire's Department of Environmental Services. And there aren't likely to be many suppliers willing to make a special gasoline blend exclusively for New Hampshire's small market. "Frankly, this EPA decision is probably not going to improve our [MTBE] predicament that much because it won't change what we get in terms of gasoline," said Finemore.
Nor is the decision going to convince New Hampshire to drop its lawsuits and let MTBE-producing companies off the hook. New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson's (R) office issued a statement saying that he was pleased with the EPA's decision, but the state is still expected to aggressively pursue its lawsuits against MTBE-makers.
So what will the EPA's move achieve if not cleaner waters in New Hampshire or indemnity for the oil companies? It may give just the needed boost to Bush's notorious energy bill, which stalled out in Congress late last year but which the administration will again be aggressively pushing in the coming weeks. Here's why: New Hampshire Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu, both Republicans, have been staunch opponents of the energy bill -- largely because of vehement concerns about MTBE in their home state. The rumor on Capitol Hill is that Gregg and Sununu made a deal with Republican leaders that they would not filibuster the energy bill if the EPA granted the state's request for a fuel-additive exemption.
