Just eat it?: Enzyme could gobble up oil product; City to discuss topic Monday (PHOTOS and VIDEO)

The oil eating enzyme got a mixed reaction from City Hall.

After watching a video on Oil Spill Eater International’s bioremediation product at the July 19 City Council Meeting, the council was treated with a live, in-person demonstration Tuesday afternoon.

“I was pretty impressed,” Councilman Dewey Destin said of the product Wednesday morning.

Destin, who had advocated for the council to look into this product, said that after seeing the demonstration in action, “he would like to see the city move forward, even if on an experimental period.”

The Texas-based company, which developed its oil eater product in the late 80s, has been used as a first and only response tool in 14,000 oil cleanups around the world. They have also been on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Contingency Plan Product Schedule since 1992.

“What I did was developed a product that would originally break down oil in swimming pools,” OSEI’s Chairman Steven Pedigo told the council. “After the Exxon Valdez spill, I went out and found Mother Nature’s process to clean up spills — and sped it up.”

When the product is applied to the spill, the biosurfactants attack the molecular structure of the hydrocarbon. By breaking the spill down into small particles, the oil is able to be dissolved. After the product is broken down into a food source, and several reactions later, the oil is broken up, detoxified and then used as a food source again, where it’s then digested by the product to a point where only CO2 and water remain.

Another benefit to this product is that the oil eater causes the oil product to float. Once the product is on the surface, it can be easily collected by skimmer boats, or allow fish and wildlife to go around the oil without any adverse affects. With no known allergens, the oil eater product is completely non-toxic and 100 percent biodegradable.

“You can touch it and wash your hands with it,” Pedigo said. “If you are going to apply something to the environment, you shouldn’t have to wear a chemical suit or a respirator to do it.”

While listening to Pedigo’s presentation, Mayor Sam Seevers asked if the product was being used in any other states to clean up oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and if the product was better served on the sand or in the water.

“It doesn’t matter,” Pedigo replied. He told her the product has been sprayed in both the sandy beach area, and in the marsh areas in Mississippi and “no oil was left” where the Oil Spill Eater had been applied.

After questions from the council had been answered, they were given an up close demonstration of how the product works. Two Rubbermaid containers, filled with sugar white sand and some tar balls, were perched on a table in the back of the room. Crude oil was dumped into the bins, staining the sand.

Immediately the council stepped back, as the rotten-egg smell of the oil overtook the room. With anticipation and skepticism on their faces, the councilmember’s waited to see what was going to happen next. Within minutes, the crude smell began to dissipate. The tar balls, however, remained and would take days to totally break down.

When The Log asked Destin if he was satisfied with what he saw, he replied yes.

“There was no oil ring around the container and the crude smell went away, so it had definitely done something right away,” he said. “To get a really good idea on how it works, we would have to be able to watch it for days — I would like to put it on some sheen and see what happens.”

While Destin may have been impressed with what he saw, City Manager Greg Kisela was non-committal if not skeptical. He told The Log “I guess the product did what it was supposed to.”

The sticking point for Kisela was the fact that the product coming into Destin is mostly tar balls and tar patties. And the oil eater takes time to break down the more weathered product.

“Expectations are that if we have tar balls on our beach or in the water, we don’t want to wait that long,” he said. “We can pick it up in less then 24 hours.”

Looking toward Monday night’s city council meeting, Destin said his “intention” is to see “what kind of support” he receives from the council in regard to obtaining some of the product. As for Kisela, he said after watching everyone’s body language, he is not sure if this is what the city needs.

“I’m just not sure this is a tool for our toolbox.”