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Actor Kevin Costner, who has come to save the day in many movies, may be a key player in cleaning up all the oil spill mess off the Louisiana coast. Could there be a Hollywood ending to the Gulf oil spill. The “Waterworld” movie star has invented a device that cleans oil from sea water.
British Petroleum – desperate for ideas – gave the okay to test six of Costner’s gizmos Wednesday, after the Army Corps of Engineers gave the machine a thumbs-up. Costner’s $24 million centrifuge machine has a Los Angeles-perfect name, “Ocean Therapy.”Placed on a barge, it sucks in oily water, separates out the oil and spits back clean water.
I met Costner a few weeks ago and he said he started paying a team of scientists millions to create the device after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, while working on his epic 1995 flop “Waterworld.”
“I’m just really happy that the light of day has come to this,” Costner said. It’s prepared to go out and solve problems, not talk about them.”
Costner’s has 300 machines in various sizes, with the largest able to clean water at a rate of 200 gallons a minute. A minimum of 210,000 gallons of oil per day is gushing into the sea from the well that exploded April 20.
By the way, I asked Costner what his favorite movie of all the ones he has made. He told me it was “Open Range” that he did a few years back with Robert Duvall. “I like the outdoors,” he told me. Good Kevin. We have plenty to keep you busy in the outdoors down here in Louisiana.