TJ Reilly
President, Oregon Small Business Association

On Wednesday May 7th, 2014 I traveled to Washington DC to represent the Oregon Small Business Association as part of the Smarter Fuels Coalition. See: http://smarterfuelfuture.org/

Our coalition, along with former Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) met with the EPA on Wednesday morning and expressed our concerns over the current E10 Ethanol mandates as well the proposed E15 mandates. We spent over an hour explaining all of the unintended consequences of having ethanol in our fuel. In addition to decreased gas mileage, our group gave examples of premature engine failure and numerous other problems. We even had an environmentalist in our group explain all the environmental problems associated with the current mandates.

The representative from the EPA explained to us that they were aware of the environmental problems associated with ethanol, but that they ultimately worked for congress and had to implement the laws that had been passed. They do have “some” discretion to make slight adjustments, but basically congress needed to change the current laws.

At noon we held a press conference where several of us spoke about all the problems associated with ethanol.

After lunch we met with our individual US Representatives. I personally met with Representative Suzanne Bonamici, and staff from Representative Shrader’s and Representative Walden’s office. Our information was very well received. The current house bill has huge bipartisan support.