Oil spill soil to be moved to landfill

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Soil is being removed from the Indianapolis oil spill site. As in most cases, the contamination simply shifted from point A to point B. In this case IDEM tells 24 Hour News 8 the oil-soaked soil is being taken to the city landfill, a process that will resume in the morning.

In researching today, we found there is another way that is cheaper, faster and healthier for the environment. We start with a mixture of gasoline and oil. We watch as millions of microbes, or microscopic bugs, go to work.

Steve Kennedy, President/Bioremediation, Inc. says "These are microbes that are working to break down the hydrocarbons, consume it as a food.

We eat hotdogs and pizza, this is their food.

"Simply put, the microbes eat the toxin, belch out co2 and leave behind clean water or soil. All the little implosions spread throughout is the co2 being released, which is non-toxic.”

Bioremediation of Knox Indiana works with Fortune 500 companies, the auto industry and helped clean up tar balls and oil soaked birds with this same process in the Gulf. Experts say this is often a lot faster and a lot cheaper.

Kennedy says, "Because you eliminate the use of all the machinery and man power and the bioremediation works fast because the microbes do the work for you."

IDEM tells 24 Hour News 8 crews of machinery and manpower will work to remove tons of dirt from the site where 10,000 gallons of oil spilled in Indianapolis. The dirt is being taken to the landfill.

As Kennedy watched the big backhoes coming in taking the dirt out in Indianapolis he commented, “they don’t need to do that.” Kennedy says it is cheaper because it you “just mix the product, spray it down and saturate it and the microbes do the work for you.”

Taking the bugs on-site means not taking the pollution off site. There are almost 18 trillion microbes in just one gallon of the liquid mixture. In 90 seconds the microbes have already done their job and our small demonstration of an oil slick is no longer flammable.

This is a cleanup the EPA uses and in fact has used on 50 superfund sites.