Be careful when getting fuel

[burkbuilds]

Here's the EPA website that answers a bunch of these questions if you want to read them. http://www.epa.gov/OMS/renewablefuels/420f07062.htm#12 If I'm reading this correctly California has some type of waiver on the requirements because they complied with something called a 209(b) waiver. Also Alaska, Hawaii and all U.S. Territories are exempt from mandatory compliance, however refiners located in all those places are still required to use a certain percentage of Ethanol in their gas each year unless they are considered a "small refiner" where those regulations might impose an economic hardship. This requirement increases the amount they have to blend each year for several years, either through 2012 or 2025, I had trouble figuring out which year the most recent legislation indicated. By the way, this type of legislation gets changed a lot from what I read, so what was required by the Clean Air Act of 1990 was changed by an amendment in 2005, which was overtaken by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 which was changed by the Renewable Fuel Standard for 2009 legislation . . . well you get the idea. Some of the stuff I read said that the States were the ones who got to choose if they wanted to mandate that stations had to sell this stuff, but the Feds are requiring refiners to put it in to a certain amount of fuel each year so that may be a mute point if it becomes unavailable without ethanol in it at some point. I also read that the EPA doesn't require stations to post the label telling you it has ethanol, that is left up to each state's legislators, so some states may require the label and others may not. EPA admitted that there was a 30% loss of energy in a gallon of pure ethanol vs pure gasoline, but they deny that a 10% blend would make a noticable difference, (I noticed it though).
There seems to be a lot of money behind all of this, I noticed that Bill Gates has a chunk invested in an Ethanol Refinery plant and it was obvious that corn growing states were getting a lot of government money to produce this stuff, just drive through the corn belt and you'll see lots of new looking silo's and such along the major highways with big signs on them about ethanol.
No doubt the stuff is corrosive to both metal and things like gaskets, seals, hoses, so newer cars (and I assume motorcycles) are manufactured with some changes to help them handle the corrosive aspects, older units will probably have some issues with it. That's one reason refineries are opposed to using it, it eats up their equipment and pipelines but the boys in Washington are mandating it anyway so it's only going to increase in use. By the way, one reason your local retailers use it is that they get $0.50 per gallon from the government for every gallon they sell so that makes it more profitable for them than selling pure gasoline! I'm not sure when that subsidy runs out, some legislation seemed to indicate that it was scheduled to end in December of 2008, but I didn't read all the legislation to see if that has been extended or renewed to some future date.
Hope this info is helpful.

As to finding a local distributor for gas to call and ask look in the Yellow pages under Oils-Fuel and you will probably find them, there are 7 listed in my local directory that way. If nothing else look for a "farm" of those huge fuel storage silos just outside of town(usually) and drive over and ask, that's usually a terminal for a pipeline and then the 18 wheelers take it from there to the local gas stations.