NH LAWMAKERS UNITED AGAINST GOP ENERGY BILL, MTBE ALLOWANCE

by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist

WASHINGTON - U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg will vote against a broad national energy bill that would squash a state lawsuit to hold oil companies accountable for their use of a chemical that has poisoned New Hampshire wells, he announced Tuesday.

Gregg, New Hampshire's most powerful Republican lawmaker, yesterday became the fourth and last of the state's Republican Congress members to break with their party and oppose the bill. He has joined a growing regional rebellion within the GOP that pits party stalwarts, including Sen. John Sununu, R-NH, against the Bush administration.

In announcing his opposition to it, Gregg called the energy bill "a grab bag of special interests."

Of particular concern is a section of the bill that would protect producers of MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), a chemical added to gasoline to make it burn more cleanly, from lawsuits. On Sept. 30, New Hampshire filed suit in Merrimack County Superior Court to force 22 oil companies that use the chemical, which the state claims to be a carcinogen, to pay to remove it from the public water supply.

State officials say MTBE has been detected in at least 15 percent of New Hampshire's ground water wells. The source of the contamination is a matter of dispute between the oil industry and the state. While the state is suing on the ground that MTBE is a defective product, industry groups contend the contamination was the result of leaky underground storage tanks for which they're not responsible.

"The use of MTBE was certified and approved 23 years ago by the federal government," said John Kneiss, a technology and policy expert with the Oxygenated Fuels Association, which represents oil companies. He added that it had successfully reduced auto emissions and that it was not the industry's fault New Hampshire's holding facilities leaked.

"It did what it was designed to do," he said of the chemical.

Sixty percent of New Hampshire residents use well water. And preliminary results from a U.S. Geological Survey report to be released next month show that as many as 41 percent of public wells in Rockingham County are contaminated.

The MTBE manufacturers "are saying that they should not be held responsible for this product that they have put in our fuel, and we're saying that under standard principles of defective product liabilityáthey should meet us in court and áshould be responsible for the cleanup costs," said Maureen Smith, the senior assistant attorney general who is handling the lawsuit.

To date, New Hampshire is the only state that has sued over MTBE, but the energy bill would protect the oil industry from liability for contamination on any lawsuit filed after Sept. 5 - effectively killing the Granite State's claim and any that might have come later. It would also allow MTBE to be produced until 2015.

"We want that product off the market," Gregg said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. "What this bill does, instead of taking it off the market, it basically wipes out the lawsuit brought by the state of New Hampshire. It's an ex-post facto law."

"I don't see any justification for the energy bill blocking this lawsuit," said Congressman Jeb Bradley, R-NH, who worked on MTBE issues for years in the state legislature.

Gregg, the only member of the New Hampshire delegation to vote for the bill when it first came before the Senate in July, said it had been changed dramatically during House-Senate negotiations since then.

"I'll not only vote against this bill, I'll vote against attempts to shut down debate on the bill," Gregg said, indicating that he would support an attempt by some Democrats to filibuster the bill and block a Senate vote on it later this week. A spokeswoman for Sununu said he would join the filibuster.

But Gregg said he thought the bill was likely to pass the Senate because negotiators "bought off" many special interests with lucrative subsidies. As a result, senators from states that stand to benefit from subsidies to such industries as agriculture or oil, regardless of party, will vote for the bill, he said.

In the House, Congressmen Charles Bass, R-NH, joined Bradley in voting against the bill Tuesday for similar reasons. The bill passed, 246-180 as 46 Democrats joined 200 Republicans to support it. Along with Bradley and Bass, XX Republicans opposed the measure.

"Energy is not partisan," Bass said. "This is not liberals versus conservatives, or Democrats versus Republicans. These are issues that relate to districts."

Gregg said he had not discussed the issue with President Bush but had been in contact with Bush's staff. He also said he wasn't concerned his opposition would harm his relationship with the president.

"You take issues issue by issue," he said. "You don't personalize them, and you move on."

New Hampshire environmentalists put it more starkly.

"The message is clear that there is a huge divide between Bush politics and GOP politics, and there is nothing that is more important than public health and environment," said Jan Pendlebury of the New Hampshire office of the National Environmental Trust, which opposed the bill.

Gregg said the country needs an energy bill, but not one that's based on special-interest politics.

"It's a very poorly structured bill from an energy policy standpoint, it's a poor bill from an environmental standpoint and it's a terrible bill from the standpoint of basically taking care of a few favored interests who happen to have some power down here in the Congress and who were serving on the conference committee," he said.

"Other than that," he quipped, "I think it's a great bill."