For 15 years, Kevin Costner has been overseeing the construction of oil separation machines to prepare for the possibility of another disaster of the magnitude of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.
Does this evoke his tagline from “Field of Dreams?” It seems that Mr. Costner, the 55-year-old actor, environmental activist and fisherman, was ready for the current spill in the gulf.
Disturbed by the effects of the Valdez spill in Alaska, Mr. Costner bought the nascent technology from the government in 1995 and put $24 million of his own money into developing it for the private sector.
“Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill, and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn’t have separation technology,” said John Houghtaling, Mr. Costner’s lawyer and business partner as chief executive with Ocean Therapy Solutions, which developed the technology.
Mr. Costner’s brother, Dan, is a scientist who worked on the project and was also in New Orleans this week.
On Wednesday, BP’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, said that the company had approved six of Ocean Therapy’s 32 machines for testing. All boast centrifuge processing technology — giant vacuum-like machines that suck oil from water, separate the oil, store it in a tanker and send the water, 99.9 percent purified, back into the gulf.
“I’m very happy the light of day has come to this,” Mr. Costner said at a news conference in New Orleans. He said he was “very sad” about the spill, “but this is why it’s developed.”
“It’s prepared to go out and solve problems, not talk about them,” the actor said of the technology.
Mr. Houghtaling of Ocean Therapy Solutions said that the company had trained independent contractors and were bringing in scientists from U.C.L.A. to deploy the machines, which were waiting on a barge in Venice, La., on Wednesday afternoon.
The technology was available for use 10 years ago, Mr. Houghtaling said. “These machines have been very robust, but nobody’s been interested in them until now,” he added.
BP officials and Ocean Therapy are working to determine where best in the gulf to test the machines, and if all goes well, the technology will be running within the week, he said. “We just need the green light from BP.”
He said that the largest four machines have the capability of separating 210,000 gallons of oil from water a day, 200 gallons a minute.
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