Corona | Coming Attractions

On first blush the image of the star of Waterworld suggesting that he has a way to help clean up America's biggest environmental disaster seems like a joke. However, the device that Kevin Costner touts as a way to help combat the disaster that's happening along the United States' southern coastline truly appears to be capable of making a difference.

Last week Costner appeared in front of media promoting a device that separates oil from seawater with a 99.9% removal ratio. 15 years ago Costner helped fund Ocean Therapy Solutions, the company that makes centrifuges that can remove the petrolium from the ocean. Creating new technology inspired to address the problem of another oil spill along sensitive environmental areas like the one that came from the Exxon Valdez in 1989, Ocean Therapy Solutions worked on developing and then refining the centrifuges so that they can be rolled out to the scene of an oil spill. Costner showed off the smallest unit, one that can "clean" the dirty seawater at a rate of five gallons per minute. The largest centrifuge can clean 200 gallons a minute.

Executives from British Petroleum, the company that operated the Deep-Water Horizon oil rig that sank a month ago, observed the demonstration of Costner's device. They agreed on the spot to test out six of the centrifuges right away and the units are expected to start being used to clean up the dirty ocean water this week. If BP is satisfied with the results Costner told them that his company has about 600 of the units that can be put into use immediately.

"This is a technology that we know works, and has worked for a long time," Costner said in front of the press. "I'm just really happy that the light of day has come to this, and I'm very sad about why it is. But this is why it was developed, and like anything that we all face, as a group, we face it together."

Costner invested $24 million dollars of his own to seed Ocean Therapy Solutions. After the technology was developed the company approached the cruise line industry as well as the U.S. Navy to see if they would be interested in buying the machines so that they could process and clean-up the bilge and waste product that's dumped overboard. Neither group was interested.