Beyond MTBE: Banning gas additive won't clean the air - Sac Bee Editorial

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Beyond MTBE: Banning gas additive won't clean the air

(Published March 23, 1999)

Gov. Gray must decide by Saturday what to do about MTBE, the gasoline

additive that helps clean the air but is polluting water supplies throughout

the state. The deadline comes from a state law that produced a

recommendation by the University of California to phase out the additive.

Now must decide whether MTBE indeed is a threat to public health. If

he says yes, then he must specify the " appropriate action. "

Given no credible evidence that anything short of a ban will keep MTBE out

of the water, a phaseout appears to be the most prudent course of action.

Yet doing so likely will set in motion a chain of events that may increase

prices by artificially restricting the available recipes of cleaner-burning

gasoline.

It is far from clear that drinking water with minute traces of MTBE does

much to increase the chance of cancer. It is plenty clear, however, that

water with even tiny amounts of MTBE has a turpentine-like odor. People

trust their noses and simply won't trust water that has detectable levels of

MTBE.

Banning MTBE, however, has risks. The federal Clean Air Act would still

require communities with dirty air -- such as Sacramento -- to add

oxygenates to gasoline sold there. If MTBE and additives like it are banned,

that leaves only one, ethanol, as the likely alternative.

Unless there is vigorous competition among ethanol producers, gasoline

prices may increase if refiners are forced by federal law to add it. There

may also be price increases necessary to retrofit refineries to phase out

MTBE and introduce ethanol.

There are potential environmental problems with ethanol, as well. (In liquid

form it vaporizes far more readily than MTBE-based gasoline, which could

result in increased emissions of hydrocarbons.) Taken together with price

questions, those are a lot of uncertainties for a commodity that literally

fuels California's economy.

The federal clean-air standards are reasonable, but the statutory mandate

for specific formulations of gasoline -- such as the insistence on adding

oxygenates -- is not. The result is a classic example of the trouble caused

when lawmakers go beyond mandating results and start noodling with the

methods. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been trying to change that

ill-advised mandate, and would do , and California, a great favor if

she manages to get Congress to amend the act.

She faces an uphill battle in doing so. California must be prepared for a

status-quo Congress, which may side with the ethanol lobby and some

environmental groups, who fear any reopening of the Clean Air Act. Given

' likely alternatives, he must identify an appropriate timetable to

phase out MTBE to minimize disruption to the economy. Equally important, he

must identify where to get the money to clean up the MTBE that's already in

the water. How handles MTBE will give Californians an early sense of

how the state's new governor will handle important public-policy dilemmas

that lack easy answers.