Also from SFGate.com:

2 oil giants deceived public on MTBE's hazards, jury finds

In a landmark case, a San Francisco jury has found that gasoline with the additive MTBE is a defective product and that two major oil companies were aware of the chemical's dangers but withheld the information when they put it on the market.

All well and good so far. The article further reads:

But MTBE has proved to be a major environmental headache nationwide. Spilling from leaky underground storage tanks, it travels faster in the groundwater than gas and takes longer to break down. The state has set a maximum limit for drinking water because MTBE is a suspected carcinogen.

According to state records, there are 1,189 underground tank sites leaking MTBE within 1,000 feet of public supply wells or on vulnerable drinking water aquifers. An additional 1,729 leaking tank sites farther away from drinking water wells also pose a concern.

But something is missing from this story. Ah, here it is:

[California] Gov. Gray Davis recently delayed the statewide phaseout of MTBE in gasoline until January 2004.

I continue to be amazed at how little press this gets.

Oh, naturally it's because Davis is a Democrat, yet you'd still expect to hear the usual parade of environmentalists screaming to get MTBE out of gasoline now!