The oil is still spewing out of the broken rig in the Gulf Coast almost a month after the accident.
And, it is not like BP has not been receiving ideas on what to do to stop it. Approximately 10,000 ideas have come in from the public. While some are not feasible, BP has said that they are looking at around 700 of the solutions.
However, a fix of how to clean up the oil may come from an unlikely source. When what was formerly the worst U.S. oil spill, the Exxon Valdez incident, occurred in 1989, actor Kevin Costner put his money and heart where his mouth was.
It seems like all that effort might just pay off now. Costner invested millions in a new oil-separation technology. He bought centrifugal oil separators from the government then took $24 million of his own money to develop the separators for the public.
BP is now going to test six of those machines on the oil spill to see if they work and they may be in the water as early as today. While oil-extracting machines such as these have been around for a while, this particular type is supposed to clean up the water yet also sift out pure oil that is reusable.
Costner’s partner, trial lawyer John Houghtaling, told AOL News that the company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, knows the technology works and is “really the only solution” to this massive problem.
Houghtaling went on to say that Costner did all the investing himself, not to be an opportunist, but because he is a concerned environmentalist. “We know him as a big movie star, but he’s a very big hunter and fisher,” Houghtaling said.
After demonstrating the machines for the press last week in New Orleans, Costner said that while he was “very sad” about the spill, he was “happy the light of day has come on this,” referring to his company’s technology.