Gas additive considered problem in LV ground water

Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2000 | 11:10 a.m.

A national water protection organization called on President Clinton for immediate action to rid ground water, including sources in Las Vegas and Reno, of the gasoline additive MTBE or methyl tertiary butyl ether.

What was once touted as the answer to clearing the nation's air of pollution caused by vehicle exhaust has become a potential health threat to people.

While it appears sparingly in the Las Vegas Valley, it is still considered a problem in the area's shallow ground water.

MTBE is a compound derived from natural gas that is added to gasoline to increase the efficiency of how the fuel burns in engines.

Despite its benefits as a gasoline additive to reduce carbon monoxide and ozone pollution, MTBE from underground fuel tanks has seeped into drinking water wells and other sources in a number of communities around the country, the American Water Works Association said Monday.

Both the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the regional water supplier, and the Las Vegas Valley Water District belong to the 65,000-member national association that represents North American water suppliers in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

"MTBE contamination presents a real and growing threat to the quality of our drinking water resources and public health," Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the American Water Works Association, said.

"Local water utilities stand ready to work with the Clinton administration, Congress, state and local governments to implement the (Environmental Protection Agency's) blue-ribbon panel findings and protect drinking water from further contamination," Hoffbuhr said in a prepared statement.

In July the EPA recommended strengthening existing programs to reduce MTBE contamination in drinking water supplies. The additive has been shown to cause liver and kidney tumors in mice.

About 200 Fairbanks, Alaska, residents complained of headaches, dizziness, irritated eyes, burning of the nose and throat, coughing, disorientation and nausea after MTBE had been added to gasoline there in November 1992.

MTBE was detected by the U.S. Geological Survey in both Reno and Las Vegas urban ground water. In 1998 Nevada environmental officials investigated fuel tanks at 180 service stations for the additive. About 40 percent of them had some amounts of MTBE spreading underground from buried tanks.

While MTBE is no longer used in wintertime fuel in Southern Nevada, it still exists in about 1 percent of the oxygenated fuel supplied in the summer. It was used heavily in winter months from 1988 to 1995.

MTBE has been detected in Clark County from the surface to a depth of 30 feet, according to state records. Southern Nevada's drinking water from public wells is drawn from 250 to 2,000 feet below the surface and is not expected to be contaminated.

Southern Nevada draws about 15 percent of its drinking water from wells with the other 85 percent coming from Lake Mead.

Although Southern Nevada's pubic wells are deep enough, 7,000 private wells could be at risk because they are not as deep or inspected as often as public suppliers, state officials said a year ago.

MTBE has been a serious problem in California, where Santa Monica's well cleanup is estimated to cost $150 million, Hoffbuhr said.

The American Water Works Association estimates the costs to water utilities nationwide to prevent, clean up and treat water supplies contaminated with MTBE could run higher than $1 billion, he said.

"It's nothing we want in the water, and we don't want it to be there," spokesman Doug Marsano said in a telephone interview from his Denver office.

The first step to ridding the nation's water supply of the fuel additive is to get it out of gasoline, Marsano said. "Otherwise, the problem will continue," he said.

The Clean Air Act of 1990 required that the gasoline sold in areas where smog levels are highest, such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, use an oxygenate to burn fuel more efficiently. While many gasoline suppliers rely on MTBE, Southern Nevada depends on ethanol for cleaner gasoline.