Now 2 major spills (Delaware, Alaska) ... Fight Big Oil with us on Jan. 20

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Fight big oil and support alternative energy resource funding and research with us... Now we have 2 major oil spills (Alaska, Delaware) in less than a month and neither of them are getting the news coverage they deserve... We are dying from these spills' long-term side-effects. Animals and fish are dying now... Our planet is in BIG TROUBLE... Help us put a stop to this beginning Jan. 20, 2005...

Oil Eaters Slurp Up Spills

Wired News
By John Gartner

02:00 AM Dec. 14, 2004 PT

We may never prevent oil spills, but advances in biotechnology are limiting the damage they inflict as scientists supercharge bacteria to rapidly devour petroleum. After an oil spill starts to spread, as occurred on Dec. 8 off the coast of Alaska and in the Delaware River on Nov. 27, the first actions to protect the environment are attempts to physically remove the oil and to block the slick from moving into sensitive areas. Booms, or floating sponges that absorb the slick and block its path, and skimmers that "squeegie" the surface layer of oil, are the first devices used to counter an oil spill. Physical oil removal is often aided by chemical dispersants that break up slicks and prevent them from reforming.

"It's a relatively low-tech area," said Albert Venosa, senior research microbiologist for the Environmental Protection Agency. "There haven't been many advances in several years."

However, scientists including Venosa have been advancing the technology of bioremedial agents often used in the second wave of oil spill response. These bioengineered agents enhance the efficiency of naturally occurring bacteria that consume hydrocarbons such as petroleum and spit out carbon dioxide and water.

"When an oil spill occurs, you have a huge influx of food for the bacteria," Venosa said. "The best way to remediate the spill is to stimulate the bacteria already there."

"Bacteria consume the oil until there is no residue left," said Satya Ganti, president of the biotechnology firm Sarva Bio Remed. Ganti said bacteria can devour large amounts of hydrocarbons such as crude oil when supplied with nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen that enable them to divide and grow in number.

Bioremediation products are helpful in treating spills in clean environments such as untainted streams or Alaska's pristine shores that lack these nutrients, Ganti said. After the Exxon Valdez spill, researchers developed the first nutrient formulas that aid bacterial growth, he said.

Ganti said increasing the amount of bacteria is safe because after they finish the task of eating the oil, they simply expire.

"When the food runs out, the bacteria die a natural death," he said.

Ganti claims that because Sarva Bio Remed's SpillRemed product contains both oil-eating bacteria and nutrients, it is more effective than only adding nutrients to the environment. He said his product has been used to clean up industrial oil spills and to process ship bilge water that contains a mix of water and petroleum.

Sarva Bio Remed submitted SpillRemed for EPA approval and said it has passed two of the three stages of testing. Ganti hopes it will be approved in time to assist the Alaska cleanup effort. According to the EPA, only approved products can be used to treat oil spills on public waterways. According to Brian Leshak, an information officer with the U.S. Coast Guard, the project managers overseeing the cleanup of oil leaking from the Selendang Ayu off the coast of Alaska's Unalaska Island have not decided which, if any, bioremediation products to use.

Michel Boufadel, a professor of environmental engineering at Temple University, said the use of bioremediation agents might be necessary in Alaska to protect birds that can become covered in oil and lose their ability to insulate themselves.

"Studies have shown that increasing the amount of microorganisms can degrade oil spills more rapidly" and reduce the harm inflicted on the shoreline ecosystem, he said.

Boufadel said fighting the effects of oil spills is not only a question of what bioremediation products to use, but also where and how often. He is developing models to understand the effects of water temperature and the movement of nutrients due to tidal factors.

"You have to see how long the microorganisms will stay in one place," Boufadel said. Understanding these factors will help to determine the concentration and schedule for using bioremediation.

Humans have made it less likely that the Delaware River oil spill will require bioremediation, according to Boufadel. He said the levels of pollution in the Delaware from fertilizers and other products containing ammonium nitrates provide ample nutrition for the bacteria to thrive without human intervention.

The spill from the Athos I tanker so far has affected 119 miles of shoreline along the Delaware in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The EPA's Venosa said the process of bacteria devouring oil spills is slow and that it will likely be months before the oil is cleared along the Delaware. When deploying bioremediation products, he added, one has to be careful not to create too many bacteria. An abundance of bacteria, Venosa said, can create an "algal bloom" that can overwhelm an ecosystem and deplete the oxygen...

From: Bethann
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