Regulation and Litigation: Complementary Tools for Environmental Protection

摘要

To the surprise of most observers, the fate of the massive energy initiative that resulted from the closed-door deliberations of Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force turned in the summer of 2004 on how Congress decided to address the future of an obscure chemical known to the public as MTBE. The petroleum industry had used this controversial chemical for more than two decades to improve engine performance and to enhance air quality in heavily polluted areas of the country. Unfortunately, the expanded use of MTBE as a gasoline additive in the 1990s and the deteriorating state of America's 60-year-old infrastructure of underground storage tank systems (USTS) for gasoline had combined to yield an MTBE groundwater crisis by the end of that decade. As several adversely affected states struggled to ban the use of MTBE in gasoline, municipal water districts and adversely affected private well owners across the country initiated litigation aimed at requiring petroleum companies to clean up contaminated aquifers and to compensate them for economic loss. The sticking point in the Omnibus Energy Bill was a provision, insisted upon by the House leadership, which would relieve the oil companies of all liability attributable to MTBE contamination.