By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, July 6 -- The unfunded costs of cleaning up US groundwater contamination by the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether fall below $1.5 billion, says a study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute.
Consultants Mike Martinson of Delta Environmental Consultants and Jim Davidson of Exponent assessed releases of MTBE from underground storage tanks (USTs) into groundwater and private and public drinking water supplies. They estimated clean-up costs not covered by responsible parties, a federal trust fund for remediating leaks from USTs, state clean-up funds, or private insurance.
API released the study as members of a congressional conference committee prepare to try to reconcile House and Senate energy bills that take different approaches to MTBE detected in subsurface sources of drinking water. Refiners process MTBE into gasoline to meet federal oxygen-content mandates.
The House bill would protect makers of gasoline containing the oxygenate from product-defect litigation. It doesn't shield them from other types of lawsuits.
The Senate bill offers no such protection. Disagreement over the issue has been a stumbling block to past efforts to reconcile energy bills.
House members are said to be working on a compromise under which refiners would receive limited liability protection in exchange for payments into fund dedicated to MTBE clean-up.
According to the study for API, MTBE remedies not funded by currently identifiable sources would be $100-300 million for USTs, $200-900 million for public wells, and $200-300 million for private wells.
The study used 5 ppb MTBE as the "target concentration of interest" for drinking-water wells. A 1997 advisory from the Environmental Protection Agency said concentrations below 20-40 ppb were unlikely to harm health and would be undetectable by most people.
The study found that "in the vast majority of cases" identifiable funding sources are paying for MTBE clean-up.
"Only in a small percentage of cases are the concentrations of MTBE high enough to require significant corrective action or incur significant clean-up costs," it said.
