After I asked Administrator Browner to phase out MTBE, she appointed the Blue Ribbon Panel. I am pleased that panel report supports my view that we would be better off without MTBE.
Specifically, on the question of whether MTBE use should continue, the panel report states that:
I first formed the view that we should phase out MTBE in 1997 after City of Santa Monica lost 71% of its drinking water supply due to MTBE contamination.
On August 4, 1999, the majority of the Senate joined with me in expressing that view by adopting my Sense of the Senate on this issue. That Sense of the Senate provided that the United States should "phase out MTBE in order to address the threats MTBE poses to public health and the environment."
I would like to place the text of this Sense of the Senate into the hearing record.
The Sense of the Senate counted Senator Crapo, chairman of the Environment and Public Works' drinking water subcommittee, among its cosponsors.
And for good reason.
This issue is, first and foremost, a drinking water issue.
I would like to place into the hearing record the testimony of the Association of California Water Agencies, the Santa Clara Valley Water District and the South Tahoe Public Water Utility District.
These agencies requested to testify here today. They support phasing out MTBE completely.
Why does MTBE pose a threat to drinking water and public health?
First, in 1997, MTBE was the second most-produced chemical in the United States. It's out there in our environment in huge quantities.
Second, MTBE is classified by the EPA as a possible human carcinogen. The University of California has also concluded that MTBE is an animal carcinogen, and has the potential to cause cancers in humans.
I would like to place a peer reviewed MTBE report prepared by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in today's hearing record.
This report details and summaries the health studies underlying the agency's recommendation that California adopt a MTBE public health drinking water standard of 13 parts per billion.
That standard is more protective than EPA's current nonbinding standard of up to 40 parts per billion.
So MTBE is dangerous and widely used.
It is also very hard to control.
When MTBE leaks from an underground storage tank, from a motor boat or from a gas tank after a car accident into groundwater, it moves through that water very fast and very far.
It extends well beyond the area of a typical gasoline groundwater plume.
Also, unlike the other constituents of gasoline, it resists degrading once in water.
Moreover, it only takes a very small amount of this widely used chemical to contaminate a drinking water source.
For example, in Maine about 7 to 12 gallons of gasoline containing MTBE spilled during a car accident and contaminated 24 nearby private drinking water wells. Twelve of those wells showed contamination above Maine's MTBE drinking water standard.
And, it takes even less MTBE to render water undrinkable.
MTBE causes water to take on the taste and smell of turpentine at very low levels. Consumers can taste MTBE in their water at as low as five parts per billion.
That is equivalent to less than a tablespoon of MTBE in an Olympic size pool.
What is the extent of MTBE contamination in the nation?
Since the Santa Monica catastrophe, South Lake Tahoe, California has lost 13 of its 34 drinking water wells to MTBE contamination. Santa Clara County, in the Silicon Valley, has detected MTBE at over 400 groundwater sites, many of which are near public water supply wells.
A 1998 study conducted by Lawrence Livermore determined that MTBE is leaking at approximately 10,000 sites in California.
But MTBE contamination is not just a California problem.
Maine has determined that between 1,000 and 4,300 private wells may contain MTBE. In New Hampshire, MTBE has been detected in more than 100 public wells and water supplies. Suffolk County Public Water Utility in New York, which serves 1.2 million customers entirely with groundwater, tells me that 80% of its wells show detectible levels of MTBE.
Overall, the panel report states that the United States Geological Survey estimates that between 5 and 10 percent of drinking water supplies now show MTBE contamination. And, I believe that this is a low-end estimate.
So again, to summarize so far, the chemical is out there, it is out there in large quantities, it has the potential to cause cancer in humans, and it can render drinking water undrinkable at very low levels.
We also know that the potential cleanup costs are already astronomical.
In 1998, a University of California study estimated that cleanup costs could run as high as 1.5 billion in California alone.
Based upon further discussions, the authors of the study now believe that the cleanup costs are about 20 to 30 percent higher than that estimate.
Some argue that replacing gasoline storage tanks is the answer.
But even the new tanks have problems, a fact acknowledged by the panel.
A July 22, 1999 study by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, in fact, found that many of its new tanks are leaking. The study reviewed a total of 28 sites with fully upgraded storage tank systems to observe whether MTBE had leaked from those tanks.
MTBE was detected in groundwater at 13 of these sites at concentrations ranging from 1 part per billion to 200,000 part per billion.
I would like to place that study into the hearing record.
Upgrading the tanks won't solve the problem.
And neither will legislation which would amend the Clean Air Act (CAA) to eliminate the oxygen requirement, but not ban MTBE.
The argument behind such legislation is that if we give oil companies the flexibility to make reformulated gasoline without an oxygenate, they will voluntarily stop using MTBE.
A story from the San Francisco Bay area, however, shows why we can't rely upon the oil companies to voluntarily stop using MTBE.
Even though oxygenated gasoline is not required to be used in the Bay Area, in May of this year it was disclosed that Chevron and Tosco were adding large quantities of MTBE to their gasoline in order to stretch gasoline supplies.
I would like to place a Los Angeles Times story detailing this incident into the record.
As a result of Chevron and Tosco's action, an area of California we could have hoped would be spared MTBE contamination may also now face significant threat.
I believe that there are two ways to end MTBE use.
First, Congress should pass a phase out schedule. Second, Administrator Browner should use emergency authorities to phase it out.
I have introduced legislation which would phase out MTBE in stages beginning on January 1, 2000, and adopting equal interim reductions each year until the complete phase-out deadline of January 1, 2003.
The Department of Energy predicts that it would take approximately 4 years to allow refiners to retool their facilities and increase ethanol production in the United States in order to implement such a phase out --- so my bill is in the ballpark.
MTBE is destroying water supplies throughout the nation. MTBE cleanup costs are astronomical. MTBE is harming our lakes. MTBE is dangerous to health. MTBE should be phased out.
Clean air is crucial to our health. So is a safe drinking water supply. We need both -- not one, but both.
Thank you.