Rick Allen: “I rise in support of the Capps amendment. This is really about what are we really doing here in Congress. Are we here to…”

“I rise in support of the Capps amendment. This is really about what are we really doing here in Congress. Are we here to protect the profits of oil companies, or are we here to protect the States and communities from which we come? Let me just tell my colleagues the story as it applies to me. In 1995, reformulated gas containing MTBE entered the marketplace in Maine. Two years later, the Maine Bureau of Health reported that they found MTBE in 7 percent of Maine's public water supplies. One year later, in 1998, it was found in 16 percent of Maine's water supplies. So that is how we learned about MTBE. But let us just go back 15 years, go back 15 years. In 1981, Shell engineers were joking that MTBE stood for Most Things Biodegrade Easier, or Menace Threatening Our Bountiful Environment, or Major Threat to Better Earnings. We have had a discussion here about what Members of Congress knew back in the 1990s. What we know now is that the industry knew in the early 1980s that this was a hazard to groundwater and they went ahead and put it in the gasoline anyway. So now the question is, who pays? The manufacturers or the taxpayers in all of our communities? The majority is saying the taxpayers should pay.…”