[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 73 (Thursday, May 24, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5620-S5621]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself and Mr. Inhofe):
       S. 947. A bill to amend the Clean Air Act to permit the 
     Governor of a State to waive the oxygen content requirements 
     for reformulated gasoline and for other purposes; to the 
     Committee on Environment and Public Works.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined by Senator 
James Inhofe of Oklahoma today in introducing a bill to allow the 
governor of a State to waive the oxygenate content requirement for 
reformulated or clean-burning gasoline. The bill retains all other 
provisions of the Clean Air Act to ensure that there is no backsliding 
on air quality.
  We introduce this bill to address the widespread contamination of 
drinking water by MTBE in California and at least 41 other States.
  On April 12, 1999, California Governor Gray Davis asked Carol 
Browner, who was the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection 
Agency, for a waiver of the 2 percent oxygenate requirement. I have 
written and called former Administrator Browner and the current 
Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and both former President Clinton 
and President Bush, urging approval of the waiver. And we are still 
waiting. It has been two years.
  Today, yet again I call on EPA and the Administration to act. In the 
meantime, I will push Congress to act.
  MTBE, Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether, has been the oxygenate of choice 
by many refiners in their effort to comply with the Clean Air Act's 
reformulated gasoline requirements. California Governor Davis has 
ordered a phase-out in our State, but the Federal law requiring two 
percent oxygenates remains, putting our State in an untenable position.
  This is because the most likely substitute for MTBE to meet the two 
percent requirement is ethanol, but there is not a sufficient supply of 
ethanol to meet the demand in California and the rest of the country 
with the two percent law in place.
  With inadequate supplies, we can expect disruptions and price spikes 
during the peak driving months of this summer, at a time when there are 
predictions that retail gasoline prices may climb to an unprecedented 
$3.00 per gallon or more.
  The California Energy Commission reports that without relief from the 
two percent oxygenate mandate, California consumers will pay 3 to 6 
cents more per gallon than they need to. This adds up to $450 million a 
year.
  The Clean Air Act requires that cleaner-burning reformulated 
gasoline, RFG, be sold in so-called ``non-attainment'' areas with the 
worst violations of ozone standards: Los Angeles, San Diego, Hartford, 
New York Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Houston, Milwaukee, 
Sacramento. In addition, some States and areas have opted to use 
reformulated gasoline as way to achieve clean air.
  Second, the Act prescribes a formula for reformulated gasoline, 
including

[[Page S5621]]

the requirement that reformulated gasoline contain 2.0 percent oxygen, 
by weight.
  In response to this requirement, refiners have put the oxygenate MTBE 
in over 85 percent of reformulated gasoline now in use. But, there is a 
problem: increasingly, MTBE is being detected in drinking water. MTBE 
is a known animal carcinogen and a possible human carcinogen, according 
to U.S. EPA. It has a very unpleasant odor and taste, as well.
  The Feinstein-Inhofe bill would allow governors, upon notification to 
U.S. EPA, to waive the 2.0 percent oxygenate requirement, as long as 
the gasoline meets the other requirements in the law for reformulated 
gasoline.
  On July 27th, 1999, the non-partisan, broad-based U.S. EPA Blue 
Ribbon Panel on Oxygenates in Gasoline recommended that the two percent 
oxygenate requirement be ``removed in order to provide flexibility to 
blend adequate fuel supplies in a cost-effective manner while quickly 
reducing usage of MTBE and maintaining air quality benefits.''
  In addition, the panel agreed that ``the use of MTBE should be 
reduced substantially.'' Importantly, the panel recommended that 
``Congress act quickly to clarify federal and state authority to 
regulate and/or eliminate the use of gasoline additives that pose a 
threat to drinking water supplies.''
  The bill we are introducing today, while not totally repealing the 
two percent oxygenate requirement, moves us in that direction. It gives 
States that choose to meet Clean Air requirements without oxygenates 
the option to do so. It allows States that choose an oxygenate, such as 
ethanol, to do so. Areas required to use reformulated gasoline for 
cleaner air will still be required to use it. The gasoline will have a 
different but clean formulation. Areas will continue to have to meet 
clean air standards.
  MTBE has contaminated groundwater at over 10,000 sites in California, 
according to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Of 10,972 sites 
groundwater sites sampled, 39 percent had MTBE, according to the State 
Department of Health Services. Of 765 surface water sources sampled, 
287, 38 percent, had MTBE.
  Nationally, one EPA-funded study of 34 States found that MTBE was 
present more than 20 percent of the time in 27 of the States. A U.S. 
Geological Survey report had similar findings. An October 1999 
Congressional Research Service analysis concluded that at least 41 
states have had MTBE detections in water.
  In California, Governor Davis concluded that MTBE ``poses a 
significant risk to California's environment'' and directed that MTBE 
be phased out in California by December 31, 2002. There is not a 
sufficient supply of ethanol or other oxygenates to fully replace MTBE 
in California, without huge gasoline supply disruptions and price 
spikes.
  In addition, California can make clean-burning gas without 
oxygenates. Therefore, California is in the impossible position of 
having to meet a federal requirement that is 1. contaminating the water 
and 2. is not necessary to achieve clean air.
  A major University of California study concluded that MTBE provides 
``no significant air quality benefit'' but that its use poses ``the 
potential for regional degradation of water resources, especially 
ground water. . . .'' Oxygenates, say the experts, are not necessary 
for reformulated gasoline.
  California has developed a gasoline formula that provides flexibility 
and provides clean air. Refiners use an approach called the 
``predictive model,'' which guarantees clean-burning RFG gas with 
oxygenates, with less than two percent oxygenates, and with no 
oxygenates. Several refiners, including Chevron and Tosco, are selling 
MTBE-free gas in California, for example.
  Under this bill, clean air standards would still have to be met and 
gasoline would have to meet all other requirements of the federal 
reformulated gasoline program, including the limits on benzene, heavy 
metals, and the emission of nitrogen oxides.
  This bill will give California and other States the relief they need 
from an unwarranted, unnecessary requirement. It will give state 
officials flexibility to determine whether to use oxygenates in their 
gasoline. The bill does not undo the Clean Air Act. The bill does not 
degrade air quality.
  The two percent oxygenate requirement creates an unnecessary federal 
``recipe'' for gasoline. It causes contamination of groundwater. It 
adds to the price of gasoline unnecessarily, and it will probably 
trigger disruptions in gasoline supplies this summer.
  I call on this Congress to enact this legislation promptly. 
Californians do not need to have MTBE -laced drinking water to enjoy 
the benefits of cleaner air. It is that simple.
  I ask unanimous consent that an editorial from the Sacramento Bee 
describing the MTBE problem in California be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Sacramento Bee, Apr. 23, 2001]

      Remember MTBE?--Political Inattention May Fuel Price Spikes

       It was a poison brew that sent California into an 
     electricity swoon: rising demand, stagnant supplies and 
     missed political opportunities. Unfortunately, President Bush 
     may be about to stir up virtually the same potion with 
     another source of energy, gasoline. Like the electricity 
     crunch, this gasoline problem can be averted with timely 
     political action.
       Under federal law, gasoline in dirty air basins must 
     contain an additive known as an oxygenate. These additives 
     produce cleaner-burning fuel. The primary additive in 
     California is the infamous MTBE; a byproduct of the refinery 
     process. It can cause drinking water to smell like turpentine 
     at minute concentrations, so the state plans to phase out 
     MTBE by the end of 2002.
       Refiners say that can produce clean-burning gasoline 
     without an oxygenate but farm politics has kept the 
     requirement in law. For now, the only alternative to MTBE is 
     ethanol, which is made from corn and other grains.
       That threatens California with the kind of imbalance 
     between supply and demand that could push up gasoline prices.
       Switching from MTBE to ethanol as the additive of choice in 
     California would increase the nation's consumption of ethanol 
     by perhaps 800 million gallons a year. This represents about 
     a 50 percent jump in demand. California produces only 9 
     million gallons of ethanol a year. That means that the folks 
     who produce ethanol, who are concentrated in Iowa, may be 
     able to extort California with the same vigor as Texas-based 
     electricity marketers.
       The seeds of this crisis were planted in some revisions of 
     the federal Clean Air Act, which combined the laudable goal 
     of cleaning up the skies with some unwise restrictions on the 
     legal recipes for fuel. Gov. Gray Davis has been asking for 
     federal government to waive this mandated recipe for the 
     fuel, letting the state meet its air-quality goals in a less 
     expensive way.
       Yet with its seven precious electoral votes at stake, Iowa 
     made ethanol a litmus test for any and all presidential 
     candidates, and candidates Bush, like most others, said he 
     would stick to the recipe for gas that favors ethanol.
       Is this now the policy of President Bush as well? Bush must 
     say something, and soon.
       Ideally, he should use his administrative powers to waive 
     the oxygenate mandate and let various fuel recipes compete on 
     their costs and air-quality benefits. But he must say 
     something. His silence is preventing companies from building 
     ethanol (which could be produced from corn kernels or rise 
     straw) plants in California, if that is what must be done to 
     replace MTBE.
       California can't afford the uncertainty on gasoline any 
     more than it can afford uncertainty about whether power 
     plants can be built. For a president who preaches the gospel 
     of sending clear signals to markets, Bush's silence on MTBE 
     and ethanol is an expensive sin.
                                 ______