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Baby, Won't You Drive My Car

by Rod Amis

To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.generator21.net/do116.htm") and enter it in the box after you click through.

MTBE. Remember that abbreviation. It is now part of your life if you are one of the estimated 100 million Americans who live near a gasoline station in the United States. MTBE stands for Methyl Tertiary-Butyl Ether, an oxygenate added to gasoline in the United States years ago which you can add to the list of suspected carcinogens you are ingesting daily. It's very likely in your drinking water, the water you cook with, the water in which you bathe. The irony of this story is that MTBE was added to your gasoline as part of giving you cleaner air, since Americans refuse to abandon their celebrated "love affair with the automobile." What happened was that lots of people failed to pay attention to published warnings --- including documents in the posession of the Environmental Protection Agency at the time --- that leaking gasoline tanks below service stations would move MTBE into the ground water further and faster than any previously seen contaminant.

CBS NEWS' "Sixty Minutes" did a scathing report on the EPA's inaction in dealing with this potential public health threat on Sunday, 23 January, 2000, but most people missed it because of the football playoff games. You can read more on their story by following that preceding link.

And environmental groups have been writing about the potential dangers of MTBE in our national water supply for years now. The Earth Island Network has written extensively about this. Chevron gets more visibility for its "People Do" ad propaganda than EIN ever will about MTBE, of course. Already various communities, Santa Monica, California, for example, have begun suing many of our oil companies over the expense they must now go to locate and import uncontaminated water. You can read about actions and suits taking place all over the United States at this special MTBE contamination Web site.

I'm a longtime advocate against private cars, except in the most extreme cases like living on an isolated farm in West Texas or being part of the public safety establishment. So MTBE just adds another item on my increasing list of why cars are dangerous, dirty and destructive to life and the planet.

Some states, like California, have already set levels for MTBE in water. California Governor Gray Davis has issued an Executive Order asking that MTBE be removed from all gasoline in that state no later than the close of 2002. California's standard for levels of MTBE in drinking water is four times higher than that the EPA is saying it will institute. In fact, the only action the EPA has taken toward setting standards was sending out an Advisory to local municipalities, as you'll see when you visit the US Geological Service's reports. You can read the EPA's most recent reports on this contaminant here. And the latest from the US Geological Service on this issue can be read at their Web site.

Right now because of relative inaction on this issue of drinking water contamination by the federal government, from Maine to Nevada, individual communities and states are bringing suits against oil companies for the cost of both replacing contaminated water and cleaning up contaminated water tables. Wells have been shut down in twenty-one states because of fears about MTBE contamination. Levels of the chemical have been found in water in forty-nine states. 49. Less is being done about MTBE in surface waters, a cause of concern among activists at the Earth Island Network.

This is not a sexy story. In fact, that I'm asking you to do a little of the work, by reading the details of the issue here on the Web and involving yourself in the civic and political activism already taking place, makes it even less attractive.

But here at the G21 we believe that the *best* stories are the ones which involve the details of our daily lives. You can't get more intimate with someone's daily life than the water they drink and cook with, the water which is supposed to be clean and healthy and that we use to clean ourselves and our children.

If you live anywhere near a gasoline station that sells its wares with this stuff in it, you should be concerned. And most Americans live near a service station, don't we?

I couldn't help but go over the details presented in the CBS News report on this without having my jaw repeatedly drop. The story of the town of Glenville, CA., which was effectively rendered a ghost town was chilling. All the more so because the people of that town were told not to mention the MTBE contamination which had ruined their water.

Worst of all, I was angry (again) at the government scientists and bureaucrats whose best answer for how and why the problem got started in the first place was the clichéd, "Hey, look, mistakes were made." And I was angry at the oil company executives who didn't care or didn't investigate this chemical further becoming putting it everywhere in this country. Angry at all the people who consider their automobiles and SUVs an extension of their egos and so force me, a user of public transportation, to wonder and worry about my drinking water because of their need to have gasoline service stations EVERYWHERE. You should be, too.

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