The Point | What's with those gas-can spouts?

One rule of responsible journalism is not to use the platform afforded by a newspaper to air personal grievances. I am going to break that rule.

Just over a year ago, I went shopping for new gas cans. We had just moved to a small Chester County horse farm, and I was suddenly the owner of - in addition to my lawnmower - a diesel tractor and several smaller gasoline-powered devices necessary to maintaining pastures and grounds. My sturdy old five-gallon red-plastic gas can was not enough.

At the hardware store in Oxford was an array of new ones, red for gasoline, yellow for diesel, and I noticed that the design had changed. There was no small hole at one end of the top to prevent a vacuum inside as you poured, and the spout had evolved from a simple tapered tube into a weird-looking plastic contraption. I am over 50, a time of life when you have learned that change does not always mean improvement.

"Do you have any with normal spouts?" I asked the salesman.

"Nope," he said. "We aren't allowed to sell them anymore. The state has mandated these idiotic ones."

Spoken like a man after my heart. But I recognize and try to resist creeping codgerism, a state of mind that often reaches its apex in hardware-store salesmen. So I bought the new cans and resolved to give them a fair shot. The new spout was mandated in 2003 by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, as per the guidelines of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It made its first appearance in California and is being adopted by states all over the country. The new cans and spouts replace ones made of metal - an explosion hazard - and those with thinner plastic and the ordinary, low-tech, time-honored pour spouts. They are designed to decrease spillage and leakage of gasoline, a worthy end. I like clean groundwater and a healthy ozone layer as much as anyone.

Here's the problem. In the last year, I have spilled more gasoline from those cans than I have in my entire previous half-century-plus. By a factor of 10. Easy. My contribution to VOC (Voluble Organic Compound) emissions has gone from negligible to significant. Could this be a sinister plot to destroy the ozone layer and pollute the nation's water supply?

The spout on my can is manufactured by a Canadian company named Specter, which brings to my mind the nefarious network battled by James Bond.

At first, I chalked up my spillage problem to ineptitude. My mechanical skills are pathetic, but in time, I figured, I would get the hang of it. Last month, however, with gasoline soaking my sneakers in the driveway, I realized I had been using the new product for a full year. My no-spill spouts were spill spouts.

It could not be otherwise. At the pouring end, there is no hole through which fluid can evenly flow. Instead, there is a flat, solid cap of plastic. The pouring holes are on the spout beneath the solid cap. A plastic sleeve snaps into place against this top, sealing the spout when not in use. So far, so good. When not in use, the gas is tightly contained. To pour, one must rotate the sleeve slightly and slide it back, and then tilt the can. But when you tilt the can, gas sprays around the flat plastic top in a diameter about three times wider than the intake hole on the tank into which you are trying to pour the gas.

For larger equipment, the tractor and lawnmower, this problem is avoided by inserting the spout into the tank opening before rotating and pulling back on the sleeve. One can even lean the can against the rim of the tank and use it to hold the sleeve back. But when you do that, there is no way to eyeball the gas level in the tank. You have to keep withdrawing the spout to check on the level - often spraying gasoline everywhere - or simply guess, which means once every three or four fill-ups, you inadvertently overflow the tank. For smaller pieces of equipment, forget it. They are too lightweight to support the weight of the can, so you can't use the rim to hold the sleeve back. Try holding and tilting even a one- or two-gallon can with one hand while manipulating the plastic sleeve with the other.

It is not against the law to own and use a gas can that doesn't spill; you just can't buy them in Pennsylvania anymore. Ah, progress. So if you have one of the old ones, and you care about clean air and water, don't lose it. Meanwhile, I have become a polluter. I tried turning myself in to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which enforces the regulation.

"I'm told we are reevaluating the spouts," said Charlie Young, a spokesman for that organization. "Apparently, you are not the only one who has a problem."

Young said he had asked Martin Felion, an air-quality specialist for the DEP, who told him that "there is a learning curve with the spouts."

"Has he ever used one?" I asked.

"Apparently not," Young said.

Felion, it turns out, has used what he described as a newer, better version of my spout. He has confidence in the new product. He said the "new" new spout is narrower, which makes it easier to eyeball the filling gas tank and avoid overflow.

Here's what I wonder: How bad were the original spouts? Why do spouts have to shut automatically? Given the cost of gasoline and the hassle of driving to the pump and refilling, don't people have a built-in incentive to screw the cap on tight after use?

Felion estimates that the VOC emissions saved by the new spouts can be measured in thousands of tons - tons of gasoline that are neither spilled nor evaporated.

Not on my farm.

Get me 007. I think this guy Felion is secretly working for Dr. No.