MTBE and the environment
In 1990, the federal Clean Air Act was passed to improve air quality in the United States. President Bush's proposed amendments to the Clean Air Act initially would have led to the introduction of alternative, non-petroleum fuels. The petroleum and oxygenate industries responded by offering a reformulated gasoline program as a substitute for most of the alternate fuel proposals. As a result, the amendments to the federal Clean Air Act adopted in 1990 required steps to achieve lower vehicle emissions, including programs to oxygenate and reformulate gasoline. Oxygenated gasoline is designed to increase the combustion efficiency of gasoline, thereby reducing carbon monoxide emissions. Since January 1995, the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments require areas that have the most severe ozone pollution to use reformulated gasoline containing fuel oxygenates to improve air quality. Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether is one of the most commonly used fuel oxygenates because it is produced in very large amounts from isobutylene, a waste product in the refining process. MTBE can be easily produced at the refinery, at a low cost, and can be transferred through existing pipelines once it has been blended with gasoline. In contrast to other
Some water systems only test every three years for volatile organic compounds, such as MTBE, so it will be the end of 2000 before all systems will have been tested. For MTBE, this frequency of impact to public drinking wells may not be a reliable indicator of future trends because it reflects a history of releases, including those involving gasoline formulations containing no or only low volumes of MTBE. It also appears that dissolved benzene plumes were of larger regulatory concern than MTBE in previous studies. Many water suppliers now want to blame the oil industry for the contamination of their drinking water. On June 20, 2000, the city of Santa Monica, Ca filed a lawsuit against 18 oil companies for 200 million dollars for the estimated costs of cleanup of the cities polluted drinking water wells. In November 1997, Mr. Bordvick of the Tosco Corporation testified at a public hearing of the Assembly of Natural Resources Committee that Tosco's position was in support of the ban of MTBE because of concern of the potential liability the company would face if MTBE contaminated drinking water. Several months earlier, a U.S. District Court in Wilmington, North Carolina, awarded 9.5 million dollars to the 178 residents of a mobile home park because MTBE had contaminated their drinking well. The Environmental Protection Agency has classified MTBE as a possible human carcinogen, but no drinking-water regulation has been established for the compound. The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a drinking water advisory of 20- 40 micrograms per liter, based upon odor and taste thresholds, and to provide a "large margin" of safety from carcinogenic effects. Since February 1997, the California Department of Health Services has required public water suppliers to monitor their drinking water sources for MTBE. As of December 1997, about 23%of drinking water sources in California had been sampled for MTBE contamination. Of those sites tested, 33 or 1.3%, h
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Approximate Word count = 1333
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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