Water-polluting fuel used in cars owned by county

Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2000 | 11:28 a.m.

Hundreds of cars driven by Clark County's school district and health district employees are fueled with a gasoline additive that has polluted the nation's waters.

However, the government vehicles will no longer fill their tanks with gasoline containing MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, after this summer, said Michael Naylor, head of the Health District's Air Pollution Control Division, on Monday.

The two agencies got caught in a Catch-22 situation two years ago by a federal mandate that forced cities like Las Vegas, which doesn't meet clean-air standards for carbon monoxide and dust, to use reformulated gasoline.

That mandate came before the federal government realized there was a problem with MTBE in drinking water sources nationwide.

In summer months gasoline with MTBE is trucked by tanker from Barstow, Calif., to the school district's refueling yard in Las Vegas to help prevent the brown smog cloud caused by ozone.

The local storage tanks have state-of-the-art monitoring equipment, including a double-hulled storage system, said David Broxterman of the school district's facilities and transportation division.

"This stuff is costing us more money, too," Broxterman said.

It costs about 8 cents more per gallon to refine the MTBE fuel, Naylor said. About 700 school district vehicles and 30 at the Health District use the fuel in summer.

"Cleaning up the air does not come cheaper," Naylor said.

In November new clean air rules approved by the District Board of Health became effective to combat winter pollution. Gasoline from Oct. 1 until the end of February has to burn cleaner and contain an oxygen-booster, Naylor said. During the winter months everybody in the valley uses gasoline with ethanol, the corn-based additive.

In July Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner asked Congress to no longer require oil companies to add MTBE, which causes tumors in mice, because the additive was contaminating drinking water supplies. No MTBE has been detected in Southern Nevada's drinking water.

The county's MTBE-fueled vehicles are part of the 1 percent total of gasoline used in Nevada. In addition to the government's vehicles, racing fuel sold in Southern Nevada contains MTBE reformulated in Texas, Naylor said.

Major oil refiners are phasing MTBE out of gasoline supplies.

While tankers will no longer deliver MTBE gasoline to Las Vegas after the coming summer, California isn't so lucky.

Major gasoline companies are converting Southern California refineries to rid the fuel of the additive. It will take until the end of 2002, Naylor said.