15 Dec 2004 MTBE Issue Redux: A Thoughtful Response to the Federal Employee Who Opposes Groundwater Pollution, Right-Wingers and Christians

From my in-box, a thoughtful letter in reference to issues raised in the post about the federal employee who thinks about poisoning right-wing Christian children with MTBE:

Regarding Ms. McKonnell’s letter referencing feeding MTBE [Methyl Tert-butyl Ether]….

As you correctly point out, this was an additive that was mandated by the EPA, and therefore the Federal government. As Ms. McKonnell pointed out, it leads the nastiest stuff coming out of petroleum spills and leaks, as it is ‘small’ and highly mobile. This crap is among the worst [as it spreads amongst the fleetest] of the things we face in areas that are still served by drinking water wells. It also costs everybody that is not on a well, for their local municipal water supply service to capture this and clean it from their source.

When I say ‘leads’ and compare it to Benzene, I refer to it’s motility in groundwater. This stuff moves and spreads like nothing else I am aware of, ruining drinking water supplies. I live in a state where the soils are mostly sands, clays, and limestones. In the west, this stuff intermingles with what they refer to as ‘cobbles’ rocks the size of bowling balls and larger. This sort of material cannot be drilled and suctioned to clean these messes up. Quite frankly, it cannot be economically drilled. Certainly, the idea of excavating the vast areas contaminated by this crap, washing down the sands and cobbles and boulders, will be prohibitively expensive; fortunately, we taxpayers will pay for every penny of that effort for many years to come, so we won’t have to rely upon the people that caused this mess to quit pointing fingers and resolve it. The downstream halos around gasoline stations all over the country, all over the planet, dwarf the imagination in two dimensions. Now multiply that by a third dimension, especially the large third dimension in the western states, the depth from your feet in a service station parking lot down to the groundwater.

If Ms. Mckonnell has an idea about how to efficiently recover this mess, given her background, I say let her get started. We only need stop her before she starts feeding it to students.

As for the rest of us, we just keep plugging along, washing rocks and cleaning this mess up the old fashioned way. That, and we don’t mandate that it become a part of the waste stream in the first place.

I will not give up trying to clean this crap up, even though I know there are well-meaning people that will keep spilling it, and will keep adding new challenges like the old MTBE. Next week, I will scrub my face and go start cleaning up a horrible waste stream in New Orleans.

By the way, Ms. McKonnell, how is Love Canal going? That’s your project, isn’t it? The Holy Grail. EPA’s project, your first Superfund site, your chance to prove your skills and determination on a clean-up effort. After 30-plus years of studying it, has your agency even gotten started? Please send me a copy of your most current physical and your doctor’s opinion, allowing you to even wear a respirator. That’s Public Record. Why is it that when the federal government gets in trouble that they hire private contractors to come in and clean up the mess? It seems to me that they must be either trying to shed the responsibility/ liability or they haven’t got the first clue about what they are doing.

Why did the EPA issue a clean bill of health over the air quality in lower Manhattan after 9/11/01? Why did the federal government bring in private contractors to clean up the mess when the cameras were turned off? Was this somehow the fault of a dreaded Republican administration? Or is it a fact that the federal government is incapable of taking on such an unexpected event and that private industry maintains and employs people that have to deal with this sort of thing, not because they are evil, but because they are not?

Perhaps, before people purposely poison children, the people want to know.

It is time and long past time that the good people in this country stopped tearing each other apart. The people I work for and the people that work with me are not red or blue, they are Red, White, and Blue. We do not poison anyone. We diligently and at the risk of of our lives clean up the accidental mistakes that were made by our fathers, uncles, and mothers. Mistakes, made in the name of making livings for families. The well-meaning folks that introduced MTBE to our fuel supply, regulators, but probably under the influence of industry son-and-dance-men, probably meant well. That’s not our problem. Getting rid of this crap is and it will take some time and effort.