Fuel waiver looks to ease price at the pump
You may finally see some relief at the gas pump thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency stepping in to help increase the fuel supply. According to the AAA, Wisconsin's gas price per gallon has increased 15 cents over the last month from $3.35 a gallon to $3.50. Door County is even with Wisconsin’s average, while Kewaunee County is a little less at $3.44 a gallon. The cause for the price hike was the storms that hit Illinois last month, which caused a refinery in Joliet, Ill., to lose power for about a week. That outage kept over 1.7 million gallons of gas from being processed and distributed across the Midwest. Last Thursday, the EPA granted a waiver allowing Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin to sell gasoline blends that would make more fuel available while violating Clean Air Act regulations. Gas stations in those states will be able to sell the gasoline until August 20th or until they sell out of the otherwise banned blends. The state’s average price did go down a penny in the last 24 hours, with the hope that the waiver would help that trend continue.
