Staff at Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection must be asking themselves which will last longer — MTBE in the groundwater or the debate over the type of gasoline motorists will use. A solution to both could be at hand, however, if Congress gives Northeastern states some flexibility.

MTBE is a gasoline additive used to reduce air pollution that unfortunately turns out to be a source of water pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency last year allowed Maine to look for an alternative to the MTBE fuel, generally called reformulated gas or RFG. The EPA’s caveat was that any new fuel must meet the same clean-air standards that forced states to begin playing gasoline roulette in the mid-’90s. Maine found a new fuel, got the OK from the EPA, then found that the designer gas they had in mind was available only in California. The manufacturers of the fuel, understandably, did not see it in their interest to transport their product across the continent for the relatively tiny market of Maine.

The closest Californian gas station to Maine appears to be in Ft. Bidwell, in the northeast corner of the state. A long drive for a tank a gas, and the EPA is unlikely to approve that much extra driving anyway. Another solution to the problem is needed, and short term, the Maine DEP may be able to cobble together several pollution-cutting strategies to allow the state to meet the federal standards. But over the long term, it needs a less-polluting fuel.

That’s why recent cooperation among Northeastern states on this subject is so encouraging. State officials from Maine to New Jersey are backing a plan that would have the region agree to a clean fuel, thereby creating a market large enough to attract not only a supplier but competition for that supplier as well. The idea deserves public support.

It also deserves federal support, and here’s a difficulty. Every Northeastern state but Maine signed on more than a year ago to continue using RFG until 2004. Maine received a waiver from that requirement, which is why it is in the wilderness just now on fuel choice. The rest of the states will need Congress to allow for types of fuel beyond what currently are approved. Maine’s delegation supports this idea, as do most members of Congress from this region. The challenge is to persuade their colleagues that this amendment will still provide the clean-air properties of MTBE without the groundwater problems.

Several years into the debate over what type of gasoline vehicles will use, Congress can find plenty of incentive from the driving public to reach a conclusion.