DeLay. Who else?

WOODBURY, Conn., April 12 - A freshly painted, six-foot-high steel tank is this rural town's hope for cleaning up a smelly gasoline additive that is fouling its water system. The additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether, has seeped into two of three wells that supply water for 2,000 residents.

...The question is who will pay for the cleanup. United Water, a subsidiary of Suez S.A., has sued the manufacturers of MTBE to recover its costs. And as hundreds of communities from coast to coast are finding the additive in their water systems, the issue of paying for the cleanup is becoming increasingly contentious.

If oil and chemical companies have their way, a majority of lawsuits like United Water's will be thrown out by Congress as part of the energy bill backed by the Bush administration. The bill, which won easy approval from the House Energy and Commerce Committee late Wednesday, includes a waiver that would protect the chemical makers, which are some of the biggest oil giants in the United States, from all MTBE liability lawsuits filed since September 2003.

The House majority leader, Tom DeLay, and Representative Joe L. Barton, who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee, are staunch supporters of the waiver. Both are Republicans from Texas, where more than a dozen MTBE manufacturers are based....

The Senate opposes the waiver -- in fact, it blocked the 2003 energy bill largely because of the waiver -- but you just know Tom DeLay is going to get the waiver or go down fighting for it....