Conflicting forces broke apart Bass's water cleanup deal

WASHINGTON -- Representative Charles Bass was set to become a hero when he broke with the rest of the New England delegation and tried to strike a compromise with House leaders to clean up local drinking waters contaminated by a gasoline additive that might cause cancer.

But when the House leaders didn't offer enough money for a cleanup fund -- and Bass's colleagues in New England rejected the proposal -- the soft-spoken Republican from Peterborough, N.H., who has served six terms, was suddenly left alone, out on a limb.

In recent years, numerous New England communities have sued the energy industry to force it to remove the foul-tasting substance from their water supplies, and Bass thought he had the answer: a dedicated cleanup fund and strict limits on lawsuits against manufacturers -- except for those in his home state of New Hampshire.

But conflicting forces -- the energy industry, the environmental lobby, and even the state's two GOP senators -- caused the deal to fall apart. This deprived Bass of a major victory, and it gave Democrats, looking to claim his seat in 2006, an opening to attack him.

''I don't know if he thought he was going to make himself look like a player, but instead he made himself look like somebody who was played," said Kathy Sullivan, New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman. ''It's something he made a major mistake on, and I think it's going to come back to bite him."

Bass's GOP colleagues defended him, saying he had fought to find a good-faith resolution to a problem that could take many years to resolve.

''I commend Charlie for trying to come up with a solution," said Representative Jeb Bradley, a fellow Republican and the Granite State's other House member. But Bradley said he didn't like a liability shield for the industry --a key component of the proposal Bass had worked out with Representative Joe Barton of Texas, a Republican and the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Senator John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican who had opposed Bass's original proposal, also said he appreciated his colleague's efforts to broker a compromise, but felt the deal could not work because industry was so hostile to it. ''At the end of the day, the conference didn't want to improve it," Sununu said of the legislators who brokered the final bill, so he couldn't support it. Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, called Bass's proposal a ''shell game," sticking state and federal taxpayers with most of the bill for the cleanup.

Three months ago, Bass stunned his colleagues and environmentalists when he voted in favor of a House energy bill that included a provision protecting oil companies and producers of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, from lawsuits seeking damages and cleanup costs for afflicted communities.

The measure would have voided New Hampshire's lawsuit against the industry.

Bass said at the time that he was merely ensuring that he had a seat at the negotiating table, and he reserved the right to vote against the final bill if the liability shield was included.

The final energy package, announced yesterday, wouldn't absolve the energy industry of liability for MBTE pollution, but it would allow many of the lawsuits to go from state court to federal court, which the plaintiffs perceive as less sympathetic to their claims.

Now, Democrats are seizing on that vote -- as well as on Bass's proposal last week to set up an $11.3 billion cleanup fund that environmentalists say would have fallen far short of what's needed to purify the groundwater -- in their campaign against him.

''He's taken great steps toward making himself look both vulnerable and ineffective," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which counts Bass's seat as one of its juicier targets next year. ''The MTBE issue shows he is both out of step with the folks in his district and is ineffective as a legislator."

New Hampshire has long sent GOP representatives to Congress, but the state voted for Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts for president in 2004, giving Democrats hope for a House seat.

Jan Pendlebury, director of the New Hampshire office of the National Environmental Trust, said that Bass may have had good intentions, but that he also took ''a big gamble" that wound up being perceived as ''an insult to the people of New Hampshire."

Bass said yesterday that he was disappointed that his proposal had not been adopted, but said it would have no impact on his political career. Further, he said, it was his initiative in attempting to broker a deal that helped protect New Hampshire's lawsuit.

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, laughed at the suggestion that Democrats think they can defeat Bass. ''This is somebody they talked about targeting in the last [election] cycle, and he got 59 percent" of the vote, Forti said. ''Good luck to them."