It's a State's right.....
For more than two years, Castine, her husband Tim and seven of their children have been living with water that contains up to 850 times New Hampshire's recommended level of methyl tertiary butyl ether, a gasoline additive that seeps into groundwater, often from storage tanks and junked cars. Although they drink bottled water, MTBE has turned their clothes, sinks and bathtubs orange and has given Castine sores in her mouth from brushing her teeth.
New Hampshire is suing oil refiners such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., and MTBE producers such as Lyondell Chemical Co. and Valero Energy Corp., to recoup the cost of cleaning up spills. The issue is so sensitive in New Hampshire that the state's two Republican senators, Judd Gregg and John Sununu, helped defeat energy legislation in 2003 and 2004 that contained a liability shield for MTBE producers.
Last week, Sununu and Gregg, reacting to thousands of constituents such as the Castines, said they would vote against the energy measure again if it contains the liability waiver, forcing Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who heads the House Energy Committee, to withdraw all references to MTBE from the energy legislation over the weekend.
"It is obviously important in that it is an issue that ended up effectively killing the bill," Sununu said in an interview. "The funding, the remediation for cleanup needs to be addressed," and pending lawsuits should "be able to proceed."
Here's where that bill really got stinky...New Hampshire could sue, but after that, the MTBE companies would be protected.
The rejected MTBE proposal, drafted by New Hampshire Republican Representative Charlie Bass, would have allowed the state's lawsuit to proceed while granting companies protection from future litigation. In return, companies would have paid $4.1 billion into a trust fund to clean up MTBE spills, with another $4.3 billion from the federal government and $3 billion from states.
Sounds like this Administration is playing a little "no Child Left Behind" underfunding sort of game with this issue, too....
There is already a federal fund, the Leaking Underground Storage Tank, or LUST, fund set up to deal with MTBE spills, though Fred McGarry, head of the petroleum division at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, says it has been largely ineffective because it is so difficult to qualify for money.
"The LUST fund is just a credit on government books,'' McGarry says. "We haven't received money from them in years."
From Bloomberg