N.H. OKs MTBE-free gasoline - EPA OK still required
Date: 24-Oct-01
Country: USA
Author: Soo Youn
"Clean water and clean air are both critical to our quality of life and the health of our residents. We cannot sacrifice one for the sake of the other," Governor Jeanne Shaheen said.
Methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, is a gasoline additive which helps fuel burn more cleanly. But MTBE's chemical properties also cause it to pollute groundwater more quickly than other petroleum products, and some critics say it may cause cancer.
The backlash against MTBE now includes a growing number of states, including New Hampshire, who want to start using gasoline blends that burn just as cleanly, but without MTBE.
What stands between state plans like New Hampshire's are federal rules which govern cleaner-burning gasolines and mandate the use of oxygen-enhancing compounds like MTBE. In other words, New Hampshire could stop using MTBE, but only if it replaced MTBE with another "oxygenate," notably corn-based ethanol.
But New Hampshire wants to sell gasoline that contains neither MTBE nor ethanol, meaning that the state is looking for a way to get out of the federal program which mandates oxygenates.
"This is an important step in our efforts to free New Hampshire from the federal requirement that we use MTBE in our gasoline," the governor added.
In May, Gov. Shaheen and the state's Department of Environmental Services (DES) asked for an early withdrawal from the federal reformulated gasoline (RFG) program, which is part of the Clean Air Act of 1990. That request is still pending in Washington, D.C.
Current rules keep New Hampshire from withdrawing from the program before January 2004.