The Burden Of LUST

Left: One of the joys of taking the car into the dealership for mechanical work is getting driven back from the outer suburbs (Elk Grove) via the courtesy dealership shuttle van. While in the lap of limousine luxury, one can look out the window and see the wider world, a luxury that self-drivers can't indulge in.

Left: Getting off the freeway at 16th and W Streets, one can see the rebuilding that is underway of the AM/PM convenience market located on the NE corner of the intersection. The AM/PM recently changed hands.

I don't know if rebuilding is required by the property sale, but other gasoline stations, such as the AM/PM at 28th and J Streets, have also recently been razed to the ground, and rebuilt, in order to upgrade the difficult-to-access gasoline storage tanks under the property. Presumably this AM/PM is no different, and is being razed for the same reason. The generic name for the problem that is being addressed here is Leaking Underground Storage Tank (or LUST for short).

Now, LUST didn't used to be a problem in California, because petroleum fuels and ground water are generally not soluble, so there were almost no tanks leaking enough fuel to be a problem. There were exceptions, of course: I understand there was a vintage LUST in downtown San Diego that leaked so much fuel (which floated on top of the water table) that it posed an explosion hazard for the basements of nearby buildings.

The California LUST non-problem all changed in the early 1990's, when MTBE was added to the gasoline, to serve as an oxygenate, to help reduce carbon monoxide emissions from automobile tailpipes. MTBE is soluble with water, and that poisonous stuff leaked from even the newest underground storage tanks with a vengeance. MTBE was not the only oxygenate available - ethanol could do the job as well - but it helped the oil and gas industry get rid of MTBE, a byproduct of gasoline refining. MTBE was placed in the fuel even though Cal-EPA knew in advance that the fuel would be prone to leakage. (Government agencies like Cal-EPA are susceptible to fads and often act contrary to the public interest, in order to be the regulatory flavor of the month. The folks in charge of air pollution could not have cared less about saving us from water pollution - so stupid!)

Of course, the poisoning of California groundwater became a scandal, but the problem was locked in - the federal government, under the sway of oil and gas interests, for years refused California's entreaties to remove the stuff from the fuel and replace it with ethanol. If ever there was an issue where the state should have rebelled from the federal government, this was it. But we were governed by girly men like Pete Wilson and Gray Davis, who refused to act, despite urgent, dire need. Removal of the MTBE didn't even start in California until 2004.

So, a new problem was born, and now, whenever AM/PMs change hands, they are generally destroyed first, in order to get at the LUST. It's almost like a long-lost chicken from the Vietnamese War coming home to roost in the Central Valley: to uproot the LUST, we had to destroy the AM/PM in order to save it.