that. I mean, we don't plan to move. But if we do, who's to say that the people that are going to buy it believe us that we don't pay for anything? I mean, it's very nice that we don't pay for it. I don't think I would believe it if I went to a house to buy it that everything's free right now.

I guess that's what I find it hard to believe, that we will never have to pay for it. I don't want the system to just sit in our basement, if the money runs out and then we will have to pay for it, then that will make it a problem for us.

Senator SMITH. Thank you very much. Does any other witness wish to make concluding remarks before we move on to the next panel?

I want to thank you all for being here. We appreciate it. If you'd like to stay, I want to go to the Q&A period, we can have everyone come up and maybe some of the members of the audience may have a question. If you have to leave, we understand.

Thank you. One other question. Is what Mrs. Miller's problem is fairly reflective, fairly symptomatic of everybody else's problem in this region? Are there people out there that don't have the equipment that she has in her basement, or ar we getting there? Are there people out there that are really suffering right now, can't use their water? Where are we on that?

Mr. VARNEY. We have been very quietly working with local homeowners for many years around the State dealing with gasoline contamination in their wells, helping not only to provide bottled water initially and point of entry water treatment systems but even locating new supply sources to put in a community public water supply so they would have a water line instead of an individual well.

So it's something we've been dealing with for a long, long time. Because of the characteristics of MTBE, the problem is worsening and it's putting a big strain on our resources here in the State. So any Federal support, Federal funding that could be provided would be put to very good use.

Senator SMITH. Thank you very much to all of you for your testimony, especially Mrs. Miller, thank you.

As the next panel comes up, I want to take a moment to introduce the two folks who are sitting behind me. Chris Hessler does all the clean air issues for me on the Environment and Public Works Committee, as one of the deputy staff directors on that committee. Of course Melinda Cross, who assists Chris and helps me a lot. She's from Newmarket. So somebody from Newmarket made good and moved out into the world.

So I'm delighted to have both of them with me. For all of you that have technical questions, they would probably be the best ones to ask, either formally or informally.

I'd like to introduce the second panel. Moving from right to left, Dr. Nancy Kinner, who's a professor at the University of New Hampshire. Bill Holmberg, who's a resident of Bowe, New Hampshire, and biofuels producer. Patty Aho, Maine Petroleum Association. It's great to have all three of you here. We appreciate your coming and providing you testimony.

Again, same rules. You have 5 or 6 minutes to summarize. Your written statement will be made part of the record and if you wish

to add anything to it, you'll have 2 weeks to do that, if you find something else you need to add to it.

So I'll start with you, Dr. Kinner.

STATEMENT OF NANCY KINNER, PROFESSOR OF CIVIL
ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Ms. KINNER. Thank you very much, Senator.

If we could have the lights down. What I'm going to talk today about is really going to tie in with the first panel. It's about the fate, transport, and remediation of MTBE in groundwater.

I just wanted to give you a little bit of background. I'm the director of the Bedrock Bioremediation Center, which is a U.S. EPA funded research center at the University of New Hampshire. We have a national test site for remediation of chlorinated solvents, and will be opening up a site on gasoline MTBE. One of our main goals is to actually do independent third party testing of innovative and emerging technologies for treatment of these contaminants in bedrock.

If we look at MTBE, as became clear in the first panel, it's very soluble in water. It's readily dissolved into groundwater or into precipitation, so that if we have a release, for instance, of uncombusted fuel, that MTBE in the gasoline can dissolve in precipitation and then be carried down as rainfall to the earth's surface, and then as runoff go into either surface water or infiltrate into the groundwater. If we have some kind of a gasoline spill or release, the MTBE will travel with that gasoline down through the soil and then the gasoline, because it's insoluble in water, and lighter than the water, will pool on top of the groundwater, and then the MTBE, because it's so soluble in water, will dissolve into the groundwater.

To give you an idea of the scope of this, if gasoline contains about 10 percent MTBE and the temperature is 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the solubility of MTBE is such that we could have up to 5 million micrograms per liter of MTBE in water right below that gasoline. To put it in perspective, the MTBE advisories and regulations range anywhere from 70 micrograms per liter, which is the EPA health advisory, down to the 13 micrograms per liter primary drinking water standard in New Hampshire.

Once MTBE gets into that water, it stays there. It won't adhere to rock or soil, as Fred mentioned earlier. This is unlike other gasoline contaminants, benzene, toluene, naphthalene, that all like to stick to surfaces. But MTBE moves. It travels along at the same velocity as the groundwater.

So if the groundwater in an area moves in inches per year, the MTBE will move in inches per year. If it moves in feet per day, it's moving very rapidly with the water.

As a result, plumes of MTBE can travel for miles from the source, potentially. One gallon of gasoline can contaminate up to 4 million gallons of groundwater with MTBE. So that if we talk about remediation, we need to have upwards of 10,000fold reductions to meet those regulatory and advisory levels. Now, remediation in different environments is progressively harder. If we look at surface water, it's relatively easy. It's an oxygenated environ

ment, relatively easy to see where the water's going and to pump out the contaminated water.

As we move to soil and then to bedrock, treatment gets progressively harder, because it's difficult to know where the water actually goes in the soil and bedrock. We don't know the pathways because we can't see them like we could a river.

If we look at remediation technologies, they break down into two broad categories, what we call ex situ treatment, which is to pump the water out of the ground and treat it at the surface. We have a small unit like that on Mrs. Miller's well, that's called a point of entry unit, where we're just treating her water.

Ex situ contrasts with in situ. In situ treatment is where we actually do the treatment in the ground. Now, ex situ treatment has some problems associated with it. To treat the groundwater completely, we must get all the contaminated water out of the ground. That's hard to do, because MTBE spreads so far and so wide in groundwater. We don't know where those pathways are.

This is unlike those other contaminants we were talking about that stick to the soil and we know they're very localized. In situ remediation primarily centers on using the microbes that live in the ground to degrade the MTBE. These microbes are naturally occurring, and they basically use that MTBE as an energy source, just like we would use hamburgers. They degrade it to CO2 and

water.

The microbes, however, need other materials to do that degradation. For example, they need oxygen or nitrates. The advantage of in situ treatment is that we don't have to pump all of that water out of the ground to treat it. However, there's no free lunch, because the natural rate of in situ treatment is relatively slow. For example, if the concentration of MTBE was about 1,000 micrograms per liter, it would take 13 years with the natural rate of microbial degradation to get down to those advisory levels.

Also, we have another problem with these microorganisms in that sometimes they don't take the MTBE all the way to CO2. They'll stop at an intermediate organic, something like tert-butyl alcohol, which is not a very good contaminant to have, either.

In some cases what we can do is what's called enhanced in situ remediation, and in this case, we add materials to the ground to accelerate that natural rate of remediation. That's called bioremediation. For example, out at a naval air station in California, they've added oxygen to the ground and in that case, the concentration of MTBE in 1 year has gone from about 800 to 7 micrograms per liter.

The challenge here, though, is distributing those materials in the ground.

Senator SMITH. Could you just take a second and go into the cost of that? Is that cost prohibitive? Can you give us any idea on that? Ms. KINNER. On that particular site, it's not cost prohibitive. Obviously it costs several million dollars to do the whole thing. But you're cleaning up the whole plume of groundwater, not just the water that's coming up in somebody's well. It's on the same order of magnitude of cleanup of other contaminants.

So in conclusion, the problem with MTBE is its overwhelming solubility in water, and its desire to stay there and to travel with

that groundwater. To put this in perspective, MTBE ranks as the fourth most produced organic chemical in the United States. There were about 10.5 million gallons of MTBE produced per day in 1998. So there's a lot of MTBE out there. Even if we banned it today, the MTBE pollution in the groundwater would continue to be a huge problem nationwide, because it keeps on moving and gets degraded very slowly.

So I think what we need to do is certainly put some money into the search to develop and test innovative technologies to deal with this problem.

Thank you, Senator.

Senator SMITH. Thank you very much, Professor Kinner.

Let me express my apologies to Jeff Rose, who I didn't know was sitting there. I apologize, Jeff. Jeff Rose does all of my environmental work here in the State. He has set up one other hearing and a number of other meetings and works very closely with the Department of Environmental Services and all the folks here in the State. I'm pleased to have him here, and apologize. I didn't know you were sitting back there, Jeff.

The next guest is Mr. Holmberg. Please proceed.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM C. HOLMBERG, PRESIDENT,

BIOREFINER

Mr. HOLMBERG. Mr. Chairman, thanks for the opportunity to be here today. I have just learned a great deal from Dr. Kinner and may change my presentation based on what she had to say.

Senator SMITH. Well, if you learned something, it will be worth it, right?

Mr. HOLMBERG. Right. Maybe I should wait until I hear from the other person here.

I've been involved in the area of biofuels for about 26 years, in the government, in the private sector, and managing association programs. I'm not going to focus a great deal on the issue of MTBE, because you're doing a wonderful job of covering that issue here. But I want to thank you for this opportunity. Also, thank you for the fact that you came to the environmental inaugural ball in January and made a very impressive speech, and added to the success of that effort in Washington. Thank you for that.

Senator SMITH. You might have to speak up a little louder, Bill, or put that microphone closer to you.

Mr. HOLMBERG. The primary issue before you today is MTBE, and I fully agree that it should be banned and phased out of the gasoline pool. I ask that you consider a phase-out schedule that accommodates the reality of the problem and the economic consequences of such action.

Consequently, I suggest that you set up a legislative process so that the States are authorized to make the decision, rather than making a decision at the Federal level. Because it's different in every State, different circumstances, different levels of MTBE utilized, different contamination of the groundwater. Also there's the issue of a basic public relations attack on MTBE from those who benefit from the demise of that particular gasoline additive. I'm not suggesting that's the case here at all. I'm just suggesting that nationwide, that creeps into the formula.

It's interesting to note that MTBE is used in many parts of the world, continually so, for the last 10 years. Dr. Kinner just pointed out that it's still in great use. But it's interesting to note that the amount of public outcry has diminished significantly. I think that's probably because the wells are being cleaned up, and the tanks are being sealed up. Again, back to that attack by those who have a vested interest in the demise of MTBE they are relaxing their attack, and that helps.

It's also interesting to note that the people who launched that covert attack are the same folks that did not support you legislation last year. I think you recognize that that's probably the case.

The advance of the biorefinery concept that I have been working on, which is the conversion of cellulosic biomass to biofuels, bioenergy and biochemicals, is of great importance to the northern New England States. Because, essentially, you have no fossil reserve or gas or coal, and you're dependent on some form of transportation fuel. Given the present path we're on, that dependence is simply going to increase with the passage of time.

What you do have in these three northern New England States is vast reserves of biomass. They can be converted into biofuels, biochemicals and bioenergy, electricity and thermal energy. It not only includes agriculture and forestry residues, but it includes rights of way, park, yard and garden trimmings, the clean biomass portion that goes to the dump. We here in New Hampshire have done a tremendous job of cleaning up or recycling biomass. It ideally is set up for a biorefinery.

With gasoline prices possibly reaching $2 a year, and as people are beginning to talk about energy, I think it's clear to appreciate that we've got to find a way to reduce our dependence on all those fossil fuels that are imported into New Hampshire, principally the transportation fuels. Biomass presents that opportunity.

There is action required on two fronts. One is a steadily expanding market for biofuel. The renewable fuels standard that was in your legislation last year, S. 2962, reported out of your committee, is the best instrument to achieve that. The Renewable Fuels Act of 2001, S. 670, is out there now being considered. I ask that you include a renewable fuels component in your legislation, or co-sponsor S. 670.

When you start thinking out of the box, then we have to recognize that over the past almost 50 years, that hundreds of millions of dollars of Federal funds have been spent on the technology to convert cellulosic biomass to biofuels, biochemicals and bioenergy. The oil and gas industry estimates that that is in excess of $7 billion. We've got to find a way to take those hundreds of millions of dollars and put them to good work for the New England States. Thank you.

Senator SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Holmberg.
Ms. AHO.

STATEMENT OF PATRICIA W. AHO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MAINE PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION

Ms. AHO. Thank you very much, Senator Smith. I'm Patty Aho. I'm the Executive Director of the Maine Petroleum Association. We are a division of the American Petroleum Institute, and as such, I