Eco-Cruises increase public awareness of the Hackensack River and its estuary, promote its recreational uses and its value as a wildlife habitat. Appreciation of the Meadowlands resulting from Eco-Cruises motivates citizens to join in preserving it as a natural resource for future generations. All contributions are tax-deductible. By David Brinkerhoff Los Angeles - Tosco Corp., California's No. 3 gasoline retailer, said on Wednesday it would stop selling gasoline made with the controversial additive MTBE in the San Francisco area through March. The move marks the expansion of pilot programme began last April to remove MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, from the gasoline Tosco sells in counties around San Francisco Bay.
Critics charge the chemical causes cancer and seeps too easily into groundwater from storage tanks.
Tosco and Chevron Corp. , the state's largest refiner, have supported federal legislation to allow the state to drop so-called oxygenates such as MTBE from gasoline. Supporters say the ingredient is doing its job - cleaning the state's badly polluted air. Tosco replaced MTBE with corn-based ethanol last April in the San Francisco area, but said it has now decided to drop MTBE through winter, when federal laws allow some areas of California to drop some fuel ingredients, called oxygenates. Most of the state must continue to use oxygenates to clean the badly polluted air. Kory said the gasoline meets all federal and state standards without adding oxygenates.