Drunk on Ethanol

Such a mandate is anathema to politicians from MTBE-producing states. To hear them talk, you'd think their single overriding concern is saving Americans from high gasoline prices and dirty air. In 2002 some ethanol plants were found to be emitting 10 to 12 times more pollutants than anyone realized. "These plants were slapped together really fast," declares Frank Maisano, a lobbyist for the MTBE industry. "They're loud; they smell. A million people live around Gopher State Ethanol, near St. Paul, Minnesota, and they absolutely despise it."

Among the most ardent champions of low gasoline prices and clean air (if only when it is threatened by ethanol) are House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Joe Barton (R-TX), chairman of the House Energy Committee. However, their main priority for last session's energy bill was liability relief for manufacturers of MTBE in cases where it had polluted groundwater—a provision that would have voided some 200 lawsuits in 12 states. "If the price of the energy bill is no safe harbor [for MTBE], then there won't be a bill," vowed Barton, and he was right.

Daschle and other Corn Belt legislators strongly disapprove of such relief for ethanol's competitor. They also strongly disapprove of the waivers from the oxygenate requirement being sought by California, New York, and Connecticut. This despite overwhelming scientific evidence from such respected sources as the National Academy of Sciences that modern blends of gasoline without ethanol or MTBE burn more cleanly than the reformulated gasoline now required in nonattainment areas.

"The bottom line is that both the motor vehicle industry and the refining industry have evolved since the early 1990s, when these requirements went into effect," remarks Frank O'Donnell, director of the Clean Air Trust, an air-quality-defense group put together nine years ago by former U.S. senators Edmund Muskie of Maine and Robert Stafford of Vermont. "Oxygenates aren't necessary anymore. Modern cars have oxygen sensors that adjust the air-to-fuel ratio, which is one of the things that oxygenates were supposed to do. And we have better fuels." 

So does this mean an end to the federal oxygenate requirement? No way. The ethanol industry is far too powerful to allow such a thing. Basically, it gets whatever it demands, no matter who's occupying the White House. When California and the northeastern states asked President Bill Clinton for the same waivers they now seek from President Bush, Clinton refused. He didn't want to risk offending the swing state of Iowa, which went to Al Gore by one percent. Bush is worried about Iowa, too.

Some Corn Belt politicians are refreshingly candid about why the wasteful, obsolete oxygenate requirement needs to stay in place. "I once asked Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa at a news conference why Californians and northeasterners should be forced to put ethanol in their gasoline when the science clearly shows it has no environmental benefits," recalls Paul Rogers of the San Jose Mercury News. "Because it helps farmers from my state expand their markets, he explained. 'So I guess you'd support a new federal law to require everybody in Des Moines to buy a computer, to help people in Silicon Valley expand their markets?' I asked. He didn't concur."

In addition to showing that there are "no environmental benefits" to ethanol, science clearly shows that there are enormous environmental costs. For example, the general use of ethanol significantly increases air pollution. Ethanol evaporates faster than gasoline. So while gasoline reformulated with ethanol may release less carbon monoxide, it releases more volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides.

"Adding ethanol to our fuel supply causes air pollution," says Peter Iwanowicz, director of the American Lung Association of New York State. "You have more vapor emissions when you're refueling and when your car is sitting in a parking lot on a hot summer day. And ethanol can degrade systems in cars, so you'll get more leaks. You don't need ethanol or MTBE in gasoline to make it burn cleaner, but we didn't focus on the oxygenate issue. Instead, the ethanol crowd went around trying to get MTBE banned, and we just ran this nasty chemical out of town. We could have had both healthy air and clean drinking water."

The fact that Frank Maisano represents the MTBE industry doesn't mean he hasn't got it exactly right when he observes that ethanol plants themselves are major sources of air pollution. For example, in April 2003 Archer Daniels Midland, the agribusiness giant that controls about 60 percent of the ethanol market, settled an enforcement case with the EPA, agreeing to put in $340 million worth of pollution controls at 52 plants in 16 states; spend $6.3 million for retrofitting diesel engines in school buses; and pay a $4.6 million civil penalty. And in October 2002 the EPA settled with 12 ethanol plants in Minnesota, hitting them with civil penalties ranging from $29,000 to $39,000 each, and requiring that each spend about $2 million cutting back on emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, particulates, and other hazardous pollutants.

MTBE pollutes ground and surface water, but so does ethanol. With each gallon of ethanol you get 12 gallons of sewagelike effluent produced by the fermentation/distillation process. Then there's the question of how "sustainable" and "renewable" corn really is. "To really answer that," prairie advocate Cindy Hildebrand of Ames, Iowa, told me, "one has to consider how much soil is washing into the creeks, how much nitrogen is swirling down to the Gulf [of Mexico], how much formerly unbroken prairie is being broken as the subsidized Corn Belt grows westward, how much atrazine and Lorsban and other pesticides pelt down upon the land each year."