Deep-sixing two-strokes - the effort to phase out two-stroke engines, used primarily in motorboats and a major cause of toxic water pollution

Sierra, Jan-Feb, 1998 by Paul Rauber

When people think about toxic water pollution, they imagine a belching pulp mill or drunken oil-tanker captain. Worse offenders, however, are nearer at hand: Uncle Billy fishing out on the reservoir in his motorboat and his kids roaring around on their Jet Skis. The two-stroke motor that powers both is the work-horse of recreational boating. It's cheap, fast, and dirty as can be. It is in fact (with the possible exception of storm-drain runoff) the primary source of toxic water pollution in the United States. And, with any luck, it will soon be putt-putting toward the scrap heap of history.

Two-stroke engines are amazingly inefficient. Powered by a mixture of oil and gasoline, they discharge a quarter of their fuel unburnt into the water, contaminating it with carcinogenic benzene and toluence. Their air emissions aren't much better: a by-product of burning oil is polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, one of the principal carcinogens found in cigarette smoke. According to the EPA, a 70-horsepower two-stroke operating for an hour releases as much hydrocarbon pollution as a car driven 5,000 miles. The amount of unburnt oil these stinkers put into our lakes, river and drinking-water reservoirs every year is 15 times what the Exxon Valdez spilled. The crud from motorboats in Lake Powell alone amounts to a Valdez-size spill every two years.

In order to preserve its famous clarity, California's Lake Tahoe is banning two-strokes effective June 1999. (Washington's San Juan Islands are banning jet Skis, but mostly because of their infernal racket.) Switzerland has outlawed two-strokes from Lake Constance, and prohibits their sale. As a result of the hard-won Clean Air Act revisions of 1990, the EPA entered into negotiations with marine-motor manufacturers on reducing their products' hydrocarbon emissions. The result was a weak compromise: a 75 percent reduction in new models by 2006.

Incredibly, the agency ignored an already existing alternative. The four-stroke motor is quieter and 40 times cleaner than the old-two, and 7 to 10 times cleaner than the new two-stroke models on the drawing board. Four-strokes cost about 15 percent more, but the difference is soon made up by the fact that they get up to 4 times the gas mileage of their polluting cousins.

"The EPA is allowing these guys nine years to phase in a technology that's ten times worse than a four-stroke," complains Russell Long of the environmental group Bluewater Network, a coalition of boaters, fishers, and clean-water advocates. The feds call four-stroke motors a "revolutionary technology," he says, even though Honda has been making them for over 25 years.

Bluewater is taking up the battle where the EPA left off. While many California drinking-water reservoirs don't allow bathing for fear of bacterial contamination, Long points out, three-quarters of them allow recreational motorboating. Using California's Proposition 65, which forbids the discharge of carcinogenic chemicals into drinking water, Bluewater has filed suits against 30 outboard manufacturers, "personal-watercraft" manufacturers, and outboard rental concessionaires, demanding that they stop selling or renting conventional two-strokes in California.

Boaters and fishers who own two-strokes but don't want to pollute their lakes and rivers don't have to wait for the courts to settle things, however. If you "don't" your old motor to Bluewater and then scrap it, the nonprofit can offer you a charitable tax deduction, which you can apply to the purchase of a clean new motor. (Be sure to make arrangements with them before your trip to the dump. Where else can you protect your family's drinking water and get paid for it? This charity begins at home.

RELATED ARTICLE: Republican Charm School

"The good news," pollster Frank Luntz advises Republican politicians, "is that we have nowhere to go but up. The bad news is that it's a mile-long vertical climb and we're carrying a lot of baggage."

Last fall, in lengthy memo to recalcitrant Republicans in Congress, Luntz lectured on how not to sound like an eco-thug. "Remember," he said, "even Republicans have limited faith in your ability to keep their air clean and their water clean. You have a lot to prove."

But instead of cleaning up the environment, Luntz prescribed cleaning up the lingo. "Stay away from risk assessment [and] cost-benefit analysis," he advises. "Your constituents don't know what those terms mean, and they will assume that you are pro-business rather than pro-environment." And puh-leez stop talking about "rolling back regulations," he said. "If we suggest that the choice is between environmental protection and deregulation, the environment will win consistently."

Other hints: Don't attack the EPA, which most Americans think is doing a good job. Say you support "a sensible environmental policy that preserves all the gains of the past two decades" (even if you voted against them). Talk about your "specific environmental concerns, whether they be forests, natural resources, endangered species, or whatever." Above all, "remember, you are arguing that Republicans have a better approach to solving environmental challenges, not that the environment is not a significant issue."