WASHINGTON — Abandoning long-running talks with Democrats, House Republicans plan to move ahead with a proposal allowing more companies to tap federal funds to clean up spills of gasoline and other petroleum products from underground storage tanks, members of Congress said Thursday.
The proposal has been debated for months in a House subcommittee but has not yet won approval, with opponents saying the GOP version would allow polluters to evade financial responsibility for their spills.
Now, the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Paul E. Gillmor (R-Ohio), is trying to add the measure to the massive energy bill that already has passed the House and Senate, lawmakers and congressional aides said. Gillmor is a member of the House-Senate conference committee revising the energy bill.
The measure would allow the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, made up of money from a gasoline tax, to pay for cleanups if the cost would impair the operator's ability to stay in business. It would also bar the federal government from seeking repayment from the owners for cleanup costs.
A similar proposal approved by the Senate early this year drew complaints from Christie Whitman, then head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who said it would violate the principle that polluters must pay for cleanups. That principle was established by the 1980 Superfund law.
"This clause runs afoul of the long-standing 'polluter pays' principle" established by the 1980 Superfund law, Whitman said of the Senate provision in a March 7 letter to a House committee chairman. She also said that the provision would "limit the agency's ability to recover even partial costs" from a polluter's insurance company.
The House and Senate began work on the issue after the EPA and the General Accounting Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, concluded that not enough has been done to repair and replace leaky underground storage tanks, which can pollute drinking water with benzene, the gasoline additive MTBE and other hazardous chemicals.
Lawmakers working to reconcile House and Senate versions of the energy bill have not yet agreed to include Gillmor's proposal, said Marnie Funk, spokeswoman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. But several House aides and an industry lobbyist said it likely would be included.
