Ethanol Mandate Lies
Al Ritter
It’s never easy when you find that you’ve been lied to,
but it’s that much more painful when the lie comes from someone you should have
trusted. Such is the case in my home state of Maryland, but it isn’t much
comfort to find out that we aren’t alone in our plight.
In 2007 the George Bush Administration pushed the ethanol
mandate on us at first as a program of security, claiming it was in our best
interest to decrease our dependency on foreign oil by mixing corn based ethanol
with gasoline to achieve a government based goal.
We have basically two mixtures available in large scale
in the United States. E10 is a 90% gasoline 10% ethanol mixture and E85 is 15%
gasoline 85% ethanol. I have explained the detrimental effects of any ethanol
blends in the past, but as you can imagine, the higher the ethanol content the worse
the effects become. E85 can only be run in vehicles that are specifically
manufactured to run such fuels commonly known as “Flex Fuel” vehicles.
When President Bush started this ethanol mandate it began
as just for government owned vehicles but quickly expanded to a mandated
program for all gasoline burning vehicles in the USA. By 2011 80% of America
was burning some sort of ethanol blended fuel.
There are many problems associated with ethanol based fuels, but the largest is that ethanol attracts moisture (water in the air) in
an unsealed fuel system such as lawn equipment and small engines that vent
their gas tanks directly to the atmosphere. Water was never designed to be
burned by internal combustion engines and even in small percentages can destroy
engines.
I first noticed drivability problems in my cars and
massive problems with my lawn equipment as far back as 6 years ago as it takes
a little while for the detrimental effects to show. Last year I had to rebuild
three carburetors on my small engines and I had to flush the gas tank in one of
my cars.
The latest trend if continued is for the government to
move to an E15 fuel even though multiple automobile manufacturers have already
told the government if E15 comes to the market place it will void warranties.
Undaunted the government is moving forward on this mandate regardless of what
the manufacturers of internal combustion engines tell them.
Enough about the political end of this football…….let’s
talk about the lies to us the consumer. I’ll talk about Maryland first. In 2005
the “Renewable Fuels Act” was signed into law by Gov. Robt. Ehrlich formed from
State Senate bill 740. Like the federal bill it started as a mandate that
government vehicles had to run blended fuels. Sadly it morphed into a program
that offered monetary incentives to fuel suppliers to blend ethanol into
gasoline. But here is where the lies began. I can’t find out when this changed
or if it was from the beginning, but in Maryland and 14 other states it’s ok to
lie to the consumer and NOT have to place E10 stickers on the gas pumps whose
fuel contains ethanol. In other words it’s ok to tell you the fuel doesn’t have
ethanol when in fact it does! Let that sink in a moment.
* New Hampshire - NH - New Jersey - NJ, Ohio - OH.
This is a list of the states that can legally lie to you
about the content of your fuel that you buy for your vehicle. Each state seems
to have its own bizarre rules on fuel reporting, but the really distressing
part of all this is, that unless we pressure our State Legislatures to force gas
stations to be truthful about the content of their fuels, we could have E15
forced on us with NO notice!
I called and talked to a HUGE local fuel supplier with
close to 100 gas stations in the Maryland Area and he confirmed what I had
suspected. The legislature from the very beginning has NOT required them to
mark gas pumps as to their content from day one in 2005, so this lie has been
going on now in Maryland for 11 years! The gas stations on their own may choose
to mark them or not, sadly making them just as complicit in this fraud perpetrated
on the people of Maryland as our state legislature. Customers have for the last
11 years had been led to think they are buying ethanol free fuel when in fact
they haven’t.
Go here to
read more about the massive lies being perpetrated on us by our state
governments. Send this article to your state lawmakers and ask WHY they have
seen fit to allow the lies to continue (11 years in Maryland.) Maybe your state
has been lying to you even longer.
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