[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 21]
[Senate]
[Pages 29584-29586]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       ENERGY POLICY ACT AND MTBE

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, what I would like to talk about today is 
the Energy bill that is coming upon us. I want to talk about one 
provision in there which I find to be one of the most abusive 
provisions that I have ever seen come down the pike, and that is the 
provision of a safe harbor for the MTBE producers.
  As everyone knows, we have found that while MTBEs did work at 
cleaning air, they also worked at polluting the groundwater. What has 
happened in my State and in 38, I believe it is, of the 50 States is 
that when the MTBEs were spilled, they went into well water, into 
aquifers, and basically made the water undrinkable and unusable. This 
has left thousands and thousands of families in terrible shape, 
probably tens of thousands, and it is going to grow. It is going to be 
millions of families down the road because we are just learning of the 
extent of the MTBE spills.
  We are being very generous, even without this safe harbor, to the 
MTBE producers. We are giving them $2 billion to shut down. How many 
small business men and women in America, when they shut down, get a 
Government subsidy? I think very few. But we are giving it to them and 
I am not arguing against that right now, as much as I oppose it.
  We have also given them a safe harbor. We have said to them that you 
cannot be sued, and we have set a retroactive date of September 5 in 
this Energy bill. I should not say ``we.'' Two people who crafted the 
Energy bill did it. Nobody else had much say.
  What will this mean? Let me tell you the situations I have found on 
Long Island and the Hudson Valley, in Orange County and Dutchess 
County, throughout my State.
  MTBEs were spilled and have leaked into either individual wells of 
family homes or into aquifers upon which towns and villages depend. The 
water supply is gone. The people cannot use the water or drink the 
water. What does that mean? The least of it is they need bottled water 
to do everything--to drink, to brush their teeth, et cetera. They have 
to go out and buy bottled water. That is a significant expense to these 
families.

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  In most of the places I visited, the homes are modest. They are small 
homes. They are typical American families who have worked their lives 
and their little piece of the rock is their home.
  Worse, however, is that you can't even take a shower because the 
MTBEs, it is said, give off some kind of vapor that could be very 
harmful if you shower regularly. So the families have to go to 
neighbors. Since often the spills are in whole tracts of land, it is 
not just walking across the street and knocking on the door. In some 
cases that is possible because some houses are not polluted and some 
are, that are next to each other. But usually they have to get in the 
car and drive the kids, drive themselves to take a shower. That renders 
their home--if not valueless, it knocks out their investment.
  We have lots of people struggling with these MTBEs. What they have 
done, of course, is gone to the people who have created the problem. 
They have gone to the service station owner who might have spilled the 
gasoline, or the pipeline that ruptured. But the bottom line is, in 
most cases those people are out of business or not able to help.
  So what happened was, because of lawsuits--and I am not one of the 
Democrats who is the leading advocate for the trial lawyers, but I do 
believe there are instances where lawsuits are the only solution. They 
went to oil companies with lawsuits, one in California, several in 
other parts of the country, and showed not only that the companies knew 
MTBEs were harmful but, worse, they didn't tell anybody.
  If in the mid-1980s we found that MTBEs were polluting the 
groundwater and permanently doing such severe damage, wouldn't it have 
made sense for the oil companies and the producers to send 
notifications to the service stations, to the pipelines, to the 
trucking companies, and say: If this stuff spills, it could be 
dangerous. Be very careful. Here is what you do in the immediate case 
that there is a spill.
  None of that happened. It is reminiscent of the cigarette industry. 
We knew cigarettes were harmful. Most people sort of had an inkling 
after 1965. I, for one, believe that just to do a lawsuit because you 
later find a product is harmful is not the strongest case. But in the 
cigarette industry, and now with the MTBEs, when the producer knew it 
and not only continued to produce it but didn't let the information 
out, that to me is egregious because you could have prevented a whole 
lot of harm.
  So what we had throughout New York was the following. We had 
lawsuits, and even in many of the cases when it wasn't lawsuits, the 
oil companies were beginning to come forward. In Fort Montgomery, right 
near West Point, Orange County, are a lot of retirees from the 
military, in lovely homes near the banks of the Hudson River. The oil 
companies paid to put on these filters that would prevent the MTBEs 
from going into the drinking water, the bathing water, et cetera. In 
some places, up in Dutchess County, they were beginning to negotiate 
with the law firm. The town would pay some money, the oil companies 
would pay some money, and they would put in a water system of piped-in 
water because the entire drinking water, under a large number of homes, 
was gone.
  Many of these cases didn't reach lawsuits because they were trying to 
sit down and work out a negotiation. But we all know that the threat of 
a lawsuit is the only thing that brought the oil companies to the 
table. But progress was being made dealing with this bad problem. I 
don't want to cast blame here; it is just a serious problem.
  I ask my colleagues, if you are a homeowner and you bought your home 
and this stuff leaked half a mile away and leached into your aquifer 
and your home is worth half the value it was, and it could be made 
whole again by simply putting in a water supply, should we just say to 
the homeowner: Tough luck? Or should we try to figure out a way to have 
those who knew this horrible thing was happening help pay?
  I would have felt better--maybe some of my colleagues don't like the 
idea of lawsuits; in this Energy bill we have $30 billion to fund 
everything under the Sun--had there been a fund to help the homeowners. 
If you don't like the way of lawsuits, that is fine, and if you believe 
the Government has some responsibility--which it probably does because 
the Government sanctioned MTBEs--fine. But what we are saying is, with 
this safe harbor, to the tens of thousands, soon to be hundreds of 
thousands, and probably into the millions of homeowners whose whole 
life savings are destroyed: Tough luck. You can't sue. You can't 
negotiate.
  This is a classic case of what is wrong, sometimes, with the things 
we do here. We have sided with the oil companies that, at least, have 
as much blame as the innocent homeowner--more blame. And we have told 
the homeowners: Tough luck.
  It is not fair. As I say, these are hard-working people. There is no 
fault of their own. No one thinks there is any culpability on the part 
of the homeowners.
  We had things beginning to move in the proper direction, and because 
of the power of a limited few, and, frankly, because of the way this 
bill was created, with no debate, no chance for amendment--what we did 
here on the floor I think many on our side regret because we passed 
last year's Democratic bill which modified the safe harbor provision, 
due to the work of the Senator from California and some of the others, 
and then it was totally ignored and basically two people--both of whom 
I have a lot of respect for but they have a point of view quite 
different than many of us here on energy issues--negotiated the entire 
proposal.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask that I be given another 5 minutes since none of my 
colleagues is here.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, many of us believe this whole Energy bill 
is a travesty. Many of us believe there are three major energy issues 
that have occurred in the last 3 years. One was 9/11. It showed us the 
need to be independent of Middle Eastern oil. And China, of all places, 
because they are worried about dependence on Middle Eastern oil, is now 
instituting CAFE standards in their automobiles that are higher than 
ours. That should make every American think. If our country cannot take 
the necessary preparations to deal with a problem that is going to be 
nipping at our heels and then create real problems in America a few 
years from now, that is a sign of weakness of our country, and I love 
this country and I don't like to see us be weak. But we have done 
nothing on oil conservation.
  I am not one of those who says we shouldn't produce new oil. I was 
one of six Democrats who voted to look in the east gulf, much to the 
chagrin of my friends from Florida. I think on Federal lands--certainly 
not in parks or monuments but on the huge forest land--we should not be 
so doctrinaire. If there is a good amount of oil and gas that can be 
recovered in an environmentally sound way, I think we should do so. We 
need to increase supply and decrease demand. But we are doing nothing 
to decrease demand. On that issue, we have done nothing.
  The second issue that occurred with California and the way 
electricity flows in this country--again, talk to my colleagues from 
Washington and talk to my colleagues from California; they will tell 
you; they know this issue better than I--we are doing nothing in this 
bill to prevent another fiasco like the one which occurred in 
California, and the one I find most amazing is the recent blackout that 
many of us in the Northeast and Midwest suffered. We all know the 
reason is that no one is in charge of the grid. In some places, it is 
power companies; in some places, it is a conglomeration; in some 
places, it is ISOs.
  There was consensus immediately after the blackout that we ought to 
have one national grid governed by someone who will look out for the 
transmission of electricity.
  The analogy ought to be the highway system. We have one national 
highway system. Even though people drive within the States, commerce 
flows across State lines. So does electricity.
  The idea of not creating a strong national unit that can determine 
how our

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power flows because we are going to need more power--again, I don't 
like those who say we shouldn't grow. We should grow, but we are going 
to need more power to grow. To not have a national grid after what we 
saw on August 14, I believe the date was, and to just sort of ignore 
history because a few special interests or a few power companies didn't 
like it--I try to read a little bit of history. When the special 
interests, whether they be left, right, or center, whether they be rich 
or poor, overcome the national interests, that is a sign of weakness. 
It is a sign of failure. And energy and power are two issues that 
demand some kind of national solution and some kind of long-term 
solution.
  This bill, aside from the MTBE provision, is a hodgepodge of little 
special interest things. I know what it does. I ought to vote for it. I 
am getting a few things for New York State. If each one of us is going 
to say we got our little thing for our States and we are not dealing 
with the national problem--and the two are not mutually exclusive in 
most cases--then we are not serving America.
  I predict that within 5 years we are going to need to do another 
Energy bill. I think the last one we did was in 1992. We are going to 
need to do another Energy bill because the best that can be said about 
this bill is it sidesteps the major problems. The worst that can be 
said about it, or one of the harshest things that can be said about it, 
is if you hired the right lobbyist and had the right connections, you 
got something in this bill.
  But the thing I most object to is not all those little things in 
there but, rather, that they have taken the place of a national policy 
on energy which we do not have. If there was ever a time to have it, 
after 9/11, blackouts, and Enron in California, now is the time we 
should have created it. If we can't create it now, when?
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Graham of South Carolina). Without 
objection, it is so ordered.

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