"Regulation of Fuels and Fuel Additives:
Extension of the Reformulated Gasoline Program to the St. Louis, Missouri Moderate Ozone Nonattainment Area"
On September 15, 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency published in the Federal Register a proposed rule with the document identification of fr15se98 31. The proposal would ban the sale of conventional gasoline in the St. Louis, Missouri area to everyone but retailers and wholesale purchasers by May 1, 1999. A total ban on all sales would be enforced beginning on June 1, 1999. Following the implementation of the ban, all gasoline sold in the region would be of reformulated gas (RFG), a formulation discovered by the gasoline industry in the late 1980s (Regulation of fuels..., 1998, 49317).
The rule was proposed because St. Louis was designated a "non-attainment zone" under the 1990 Clean Air Act. That act was intended to reduce auto emissions and smog in key urban areas, and included provisions to enforce non-compliance with the act. Originally, the act intended to limit the use of gasoline in cars and to encourage the use of alternative fuels. The EPA contended that gasoline use in cars contributed greatly to high concentrations of ground-level ozone, which it found to be highly toxic to humans. Additionally, the combustion of gasoline in automobile engines also emitted high levels of carbon monoxide, a "greenhouse gas" that is believed to contribute to the "global warming" phenomenon. In order to reduce these emissions, the EPA recommended that a national effort should be made to switch over from gasoline to alternative, cleaner burning fuels such as ethanol or methanol (Clean fuels: An overview, 1992, 1).
However, the petroleum and auto industries objected to this, noting that a drastic reduction in the number of cars using gasoline would have to be achieved before such a switch could take place. As an alternative, the petroleum industry recommended that...