Delay in eliminating MTBE is going to cost the valley
Guest opinion as published in the San Jose Mercury News, March 22, 2002

By Rosemary C. Kamei

Many of us breathed a sigh of relief when Gov. Gray Davis recently announced that he's giving the state one more year to flush MTBE from California's gas supplies (``Davis moves to keep gas prices in check; ban on water-polluting additive delayed one year,'' March 16).

Davis said the one-year delay will keep gasoline prices from skyrocketing. The governor's decision also means Santa Clara County taxpayers will continue to shell out nearly a million dollars a year to protect the valley's drinking water from MTBE contamination.

The governor's decision is symptomatic of a bigger problem, federal policy-making that either doesn't work or works poorly on the local level.

Here's the issue: To satisfy a federal clean-air requirement, California has been using an oxygenate known as MTBE in its gasoline since the mid-1990s to produce cleaner-burning fuel. However, the gasoline additive -- a potential carcinogen -- is showing up around underground fuel storage tanks, contaminating dozens of drinking water wells up and down the state. In communities such as South Lake Tahoe, Santa Monica and Temecula Valley, MTBE has wiped out drinking water wells.

In Santa Clara County, underground fuel tanks at more than 600 sites -- primarily service stations -- have leaked gasoline with MTBE into the ground. Work by local fire departments, hazardous materials inspectors and cleanup regulators, like the Santa Clara Valley Water District, has so far kept MTBE out of all but two of the valley's 600 or so drinking water wells. We've been extremely lucky.

But an estimated 150 large public drinking water wells are threatened by MTBE because of their proximity to MTBE-contaminated sites. New studies suggest that as many as 240 more gasoline stations may be leaking MTBE but have not yet been discovered.

Each year, the water district spends roughly $800,000 to find leaking tanks and oversee cleanup of MTBE-contaminated sites. The district budgets another $100,000 to monitor and protect groundwater supplies from MTBE contamination. In Santa Clara County, we rely on those great underground storehouses for about half of our annual drinking water needs.

The cost to replace the groundwater basin and its 179 billion gallons of drinking water should we lose it to MTBE contamination can't be estimated, but would likely run into the billions of dollars -- and there's serious doubt as to whether any ``replacement'' water could be found.

To his credit, the governor has made significant attempts to obtain a waiver from the federal requirement of adding an oxygenate to the state's gasoline supplies. We hope he will continue to push for the statewide oxygenate waiver and hope that his decision to extend the phase-out deadline won't undermine those efforts.

Here in Santa Clara County, the longer it takes to get rid of MTBE from our environment, the more it's going to cost us to keep protecting our drinking water from contamination.