Senator George V. Voinovich
Opening Remarks
Hearing on MTBE
Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety
October 6, 1999

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased you are conducting this hearing on the EPA's Blue Ribbon Panel findings on the use of oxygenates in gasoline.

Throughout my 33 years of public service, I have been committed to preserving our environment and the health and well-being of our citizens. While in the Ohio House of Representatives, I was responsible for creating the Environment and Natural Resources Committee and was honored to serve as vice chair of that committee.

I am proud that the State of Ohio realized significant improvements in air quality in recent years. When I first entered office as Governor in 1991, most of Ohio's urban areas were not attaining the 1-hour ozone standard. By the time I left office in 1998, all cities had attained the standards, except one. However, earlier this year EPA proposed a rule to revoke the 1-hour standard for the last nonattainment area.

Overall, the ozone level in Ohio has gone down by 25 percent. In many urban areas, it has gone down by more than 50 percent in the past 20 years. My point is that Ohio is doing its part to provide cleaner air and a healthier environment for its citizens. For instance, Ohio's public utilities spent $3.7 billion on air pollution controls through 1995, more than the combined expenditures of all the Northeast states.

As I said, all of our urban areas but one have met the one-hour ozone standard. And one of the things we did in Ohio to achieve this was to implement an emission testing program. This was not an easy task and I took a lot of heat for it. As a matter of fact, I had to veto a bill passed by the state legislature which would have removed the E-Check program because it was so unpopular and the legislature did not want to take the heat for it. But my Administration thought this program would best help us attain the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Ohio could have chosen to opt into the reformulated gasoline program as one option to reach the NAAQS standards, but we were not mandated to use it. However, other areas of the country are required to participate in the reformulated gasoline program to help them comply with air standards.

I think most state and local governments are willing to take the necessary steps to make the air we breathe cleaner. However, we need to make sure that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. We want to make sure that as we are trying to reduce pollution in one source, such as air, we aren't affecting other sources, such as drinking or ground water. We need to make sure there is proper analysis and sound science behind the decisions we make whether they are regulatory standards or legislative requirements.

Quite frankly, I am concerned we are hear today. I am concerned that in 1990 Congress acted to put the 2 percent mandate in the reformulated gasoline program without showing the necessary scientific reason for doing so. I am concerned that there was no analysis of the costs, benefits or risks behind this provision before it was enacted into law.

However, I am not convinced that EPA's Blue Ribbon Panel provides us with the adequate cost, benefit or risk analysis behind their recommendations either. We need to know more information before we start off on a new course of action. And we need to know whether the same money should be spent in this area or on other priority environmental problems.

I'm not here to say whether these recommendations are wrong or right, but that we need more information to determine whether this is the right path to follow.

I think that something should be done. However, I propose that states should have the flexibility to determine how to handle this problem in their own states.

Today we have an example of where a mandate was made without adequately studying the potential risks that it could impose or the science behind it. However, before we jump forward with extensive suggestions on how to fix the problem, there needs to be careful analysis of the costs, benefits and risks that would be incurred by these proposals.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to today's testimony.