As legislation that will line the pockets of energy corporations moves through Congress, environmentalists fear that if one provision remains intact, a dangerous fuel additive will remain in the drinking water of millions of people.
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Apr 22, 2005 -
The Energy Bill approved in the House of Representatives yesterday could ensure that an industrial chemical continues to contaminate drinking water in at least 29 states, while allowing the government and industry to avoid picking up the tab.
The leakage of the fuel additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) from industrial underground storage tanks affects the groundwater supplies of more than 1,800 communities in at least 29 states, according to recent reports published by two national environmental organizations, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Working Group. Environmentalists and members of Congress opposed to the Energy Bill have pointed out that under the legislation, all of these communities would lose their right to sue the oil and gas industries for causing the contamination.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s research has shown that high concentrations of MTBE contamination could cause cancer, and even low concentrations could render water undrinkable. Many states have banned or restricted the use of MTBE in gasoline production.
According to the Sierra Club report, the federal government has registered 130,000 leaking underground storage tanks nationwide that may affect drinking water, emit toxic fumes or cause chemical fires. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of potentially hazardous tanks remain uninspected, unregistered or totally unregulated by the federal government.
At an average of $125,000 per site, the cost of cleanup has fallen largely on state governments, and the Sierra Club reports that officials in 46 states have reported inadequate resources for addressing the issue.
The leakage of MTBE from some of these tanks has been a contentious issue in the Energy Bill debate as industry and House Republicans have pushed to protect gas corporations from lawsuits. The liability waiver in the Energy Bill would effectively remove the power of citizens and local governments to hold industry legally responsible for MTBE contamination, and would apply to all cases since September 2003. A similar initiative was included in the 2003 version of the energy legislation but the entire bill ultimately failed in the Senate.
Environmental advocacy groups have decried the liability protection as a blatant handout that allows large gas corporations to escape MTBE cleanup costs, estimated to reach approximately $29 billion. The environmental and health burdens of the contamination, opponents argue, will then fall on local communities and smaller businesses in the gas industry, like gas stations, which are not protected by the liability clause.
Grant Cope, a Washington representative of the Sierra Club, called the waiver "a glaring example of how this administration chooses to favor polluting industries over communities, drinking water systems, and churches and schools."
| Low-income urban areas would be among the hardest-hit by the reduction in cleanup resources. |
He told
The NewStandard that although the Bush administration purports to champion states’ rights, the liability waiver "would take away the right of states to enforce their consumer protection laws. … And that’s a huge step back for the ability of states all across the country to protect drinking water supplies."
The industry has held that it did not know of the dangers of MTBE and began adding the substance to its products only in response to federal regulations on the gas manufacturing process. Opponents of the provision, however, point out that this argument runs counter to what the state courts have revealed in lawsuits against MTBE polluters: that companies knew the contaminant was harmful when they released it into the environment.
In the case of the South Tahoe Public Utility District in 2002, a group of gas companies, including Shell and Texaco, Inc. agreed to pay a total of $69 million after the jury ruled that the corporations had failed to warn of its dangers. In the case of Shell, the jury found the company had "acted with malice."
Joan Mulhern, an attorney with the advocacy group Earth Justice, pointed out that if stripped of their legal right to go after contaminating corporations, states and private individuals would in addition face a severe shortage of government resources for MTBE cleanup. Though there is a special Environmental Protection Agency fund for leaking storage tanks, Mulhern said, it is merely a stopgap measure, not "designed to replace the liability of corporations."
Mulhern warned that because the waiver essentially "takes away any incentive to avoid causing harm," it "sets a bad precedent" for industry to pursue liability immunity for other environmental hazards.
Low-income urban areas would be among the hardest-hit by the reduction in cleanup resources, noted Cope. Lacking economic resources and attention from the government in general, he predicted, these communities will find themselves "left at the back of a very long line of backlogged cleanups."
The burden on states with large groundwater supplies is even greater. Cope said that since it is difficult to contain contamination in extensive water systems, the government cannot target specific wells and must instead invest a massive amount of money in treating the entire system. One such state is Florida, where 93 percent of the population relies on groundwater, and where over 17,500 leaking underground storage sites are waiting to be treated -- the largest cleanup backlog in the country.
William Cooke, director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, an environmental advocacy group serving New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, said the liability protection demonstrates the government’s "intent to shift the responsibility for mitigation and clean-up to local taxpayers."
Cooke said that in New York, his group was struggling to initiate cleanup for thousands of wells statewide, and that unchecked contamination would have devastating economic impacts on local property values and water utility costs.
Basically, said Cooke, the federal government and the industry lobby are "stealing from the people who live in this state, because they’re saying, ‘You’re going to have to deal with the mess that we created… that we profited from.’"
Citizens Campaign for the Environment has advocated successfully on a grassroots level for statewide bans on MTBE production, but Cooke said he sees little hope for overturning the influence the gas industry lobby has on the federal government.
"The elected officials in Washington," he remarked, "are more interested in taking care of the MTBE industry than [taking care of] the people who live in their districts."
Data from Political Money Line, a website that tracks campaign contributions, shows that the members of the House Energy Committee received over $100,000 in the first quarter of this year from the energy industry.
Environmentalists have also denounced plans in the Energy Bill to address ongoing MTBE contamination, in the form of a $2 billion "transitional assistance" package to help industry gradually decrease their use of the chemical by the end of 2014.
Advocates see the MTBE provisions as just examples of a platter of corporate handouts buried in the legislation. In their analyses, the environmental advocacy groups the Natural Resources Defense Council and US Public Interest Research Group reported that the bill would provide over $7 billion in tax incentives for the oil and gas, coal and nuclear energy industries; expand liability protections for nuclear power corporations; sanction oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other wilderness areas; and roll back deadlines for local governments to meet air quality standards.
In Cooke’s view, as the protests of public interest advocates go unacknowledged in Congress, the House Energy Bill says plainly to state governments and communities, "‘We don’t care.’"
"That’s becoming a pretty common message from Washington when it comes to human health issues," Cooke noted.
