Energy Bill Would Add $260 To Annual Long Island Water Bill (MTBE)

[hatrack]

"A provision in the federal energy bill passed by the House of Representatives last week could tack $260 onto the average Long Island water bill. The add-on would pay for the cleanup of a carcinogenic gasoline additive, MTBE, that for decades has been leaking into the ground, posing a growing threat to the island's drinking-water supply.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed yesterday to filibuster the bill in the Senate - unless the provision, which protects oil companies from having to foot the bill for the cleanup, is removed. "This is the worst special-interest giveaway to polluters that I've seen in my 30-year political career," Schumer said.

New York's senior senator also released a list of 30 newly discovered spills on or near Long Island water supply wells. Most of these leaks occur from faulty tanks under gas stations. That brings the number of Long Island gas spills not meeting cleanup standards up to 1,600, said Walter Hang, president of Toxic Targeting, Inc., an environmental watchdog group. "These gas stations sometimes don't get cleaned up for 20 years," Hang said.

MTBE - methyl tertiary butyl ether - is more dangerous than some other gas additives because it is water-soluble, meaning it blends right into water once it makes contact with it, Hang said. "It migrates really far, really fast. It's like sugar dissolving in coffee," he said. Oil companies began using MTBE in 1979 to cut air pollution, but in the early 1990s, the chemical was found to quickly leak into ground water. MTBE exposure can lead to headaches and nausea, and has caused cancer and birth defects in laboratory animals."

EDIT

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/303445p-259746c.html

[phantom power]

1. privatized profit, publicized risk.

Hey, it's great work if you can get it.

[hunter]

2. MTBE was not added to "cut air pollution."

It does cut air pollution, but mostly it was profitable as an inexpensive octane booster derived from natural gas. By using MTBE oil companies could make more gasoline for less money.

(Listen carefully, you can almost hear the records being shredded... This is why the oil companies want the MTBE liability waiver so badly.)

House OKs energy bill laden with tax breaks
Measure seeks to build up domestic oil production

Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Friday, April 22, 2005

...But the MTBE liability provision and the cost of the subsidies could become major sticking points when the Senate takes up the energy bill next month. The House has passed an energy bill for four straight years, only to see the measure fail in the Senate.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed that Senate Democrats would try to defeat the bill or at least strip provisions such as the liability shield for the manufacturers of the additive methyl tertiary butyl ether, known as MTBE.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/22/MNG45CDDBS1.DTL

In a perfect world gasoline station tanks wouldn't leak...

[NNadir]

3. The main reason MTBE was needed to boost octane was lead removal.

The premier octane booster of my youth was tetraethyl lead. In some places people actually used to refer to gasoline as "ethyl." When the chaparral around Los Angeles catches fire it still volatilizes quite a bit of lead left over from the fifties and sixties. I'm sure fires in the Long Island Pine Barrens do exactly the same.

Gasoline is bad stuff. It has always been bad stuff. This is not a new development since the introduction of MTBE. Gasoline contains benzene and many other substances that are bad for you. It is a known carcinogen. The products of burning it are also known carcinogens and these same products destroy health, life, and property in other ways besides by causing cancer. People insist on using gasoline anyway, and complain vociferously when access to it denied, especially on Long Island. I recall the outrage on Long Island when unleaded gasoline was introduced and people were forced to use because of the development of the catalytic converter. Unleaded gasoline cost a few cents more than leaded gasoline. You would have thought they raised the price of heroin to the addicts, which was, actually, the case. I do think that there is an element of collective responsibility. It is not just big, bad energy companies.

For the record, I worked quite a bit with MTBE as a solvent in the lab for recrystallization for certain hydrophobic compounds with which I worked extensively. As a solvent, it was a mixed bag and didn't end up being the best solvent for my purposes.. It never made me very sick, but I have a strong constitution and tolerate all sorts of toxic chemicals fairly well. Once I was out of gas and my boss suggested I put some unused MTBE solvent in my car to make it to the gas station. I mixed it with a little toluene and put it in the tank. It worked quite well as a fuel. I made it to the gas station fine.

I grew up on Long Island, and frequently visited the dump in Huntington (near Fort Salonga) which has to be one of the most toxic places on earth. This conclusion is not based on any chemical analysis of which I heard, but stems basically from what I saw there as a kid, when I sometimes worked on home improvement projects and drove trucks to dump stuff. I had to pay two or three dollars if I had a Huntington town sticker and then could dump whatever I wanted. No one ever asked me what was in the truck. When I think of all the motorheads with whom I grew up, the paint thinner soaked rags, the rags soaked in TCE (trichloroethylene) "degreaser," the plastics, the paints, the lead pipes, the discarded solder, the mercury thermometers, my head spins. It goes without saying that underground gas tanks, underground oil tanks, and a whole host of other dubious stuff have been leaking into ground water on Long Island for a century or more.

Long Island itself geologically is basically a huge glacial sand bar where water underground flows and where solutes diffuse very rapidly. There are several million people too many living on it. Half the people have cesspools, and they happily dump incredible shit down the drains. I get sick just thinking about my high school chemistry labs.

It is interesting to note that as global climate change proceeds, much of the South Shore of Long Island will be completely submerged. This is mildly amusing since Long Island, the home of one of the original Republican corrupt thugs, Alfonse D'Amato, a product of the criminal Margiotta Republican machine that presaged the Bush administration, usually votes Republican.

I also note that Long Island is the birthplace of anti-nuclear NIMBY, which began a long time ago when LILCO proposed building a nuclear plant in the wealthy community of Lloyd's Neck. This plant, of course, got canceled before it got much past the proposal stage, but the machinery was funded and in place to later stop Shoreham. I participated in that adventure myself. I helped to stop Shoreham. (One still hears the specious arguments against nuclear energy, arguments that were devised by rich people back in the 1960's, used today; boy, do I feel dumb. I used to recite that stuff like the rosary.) It is therefore also mildly amusing when ash particles from the Northport power plants and the garbage "co-generation" incinerators in Nassau county, rain down on Lloyd's Neck and when they dissolve the paint on the new Mercedes, Jaguars and Rolls Royces, not to mention lung and other tissues. Serves 'em right.

[rfkrfk]

4. MTBE is added to meet the mandated oxygen content of gasoline

in some areas.
From a refiners point of view, mtbe has several
desired proerties, good octane rating, but more importantly,
mtbe has a 'less bad' effect on vapor pressure, than the other
common oxygenate... ethanol.

The oxygen requirement, IMO, is bs.
The only purpose is to try to force cars with
carburetors to run leaner.
How many of those cars are still around?
In a vehicle with electronic engine management,
the oxygen requirement is meaningless.

Unfortunately, 'getting rid of the oxygen requirement'
becomes political, as the alternative to mtbe ... ethanol,
gets farmers involved.

Some states have banned mtbe. There, the issue becomes,
if the Feds decide there is a smog problem, they will
mandate the use of oxygenated gas. If ethanol is chosen
to add oxygen, the 'rest of the gasoline' must be different to meet
vapor pressure, different and more expensive.
Of course, all this applies to California gas,
plus additional weirdness caused by still more state gas laws.

[hunter]

5. It is all, as you put it, "BS."

The entire MTBE fiasco has been an exercise in shoveling bullshit.

Regulations governing the composition of gasoline are utterly irrational at this point, and in many cases cause more harm than good.