Working with Mother Nature as a partner is at the heart of sustainability. Take food, for example.
We often forget that fermenting wine, rising dough or making cheese require the help of living organisms. When it comes
to eliminating soil contamination, Nature has a plan, too. To help her do the job faster, Howard Sprouse and Thom O'Dell launched
the Remediators, (http://www.theremediators.com/), 360-565-2065) in 2005. Trained, experienced botanists, they work with special silent partners -- fungi. Stalwart
little digesters, fungi are among nature's most often overlooked magicians. "Remediate means to make new again,"
said Sprouse. Fungi transform icky stuff into clean, healthy soil. Certain fungi thrive on a diet of spilled petroleum
-- crude oil, gas and diesel. They happily slurp up a post-industrial alphabet soup of toxic compounds known by their initials:
PCB, PHA, BTEX. They digest DDT and dioxins, producing no bad byproducts, only good soil. Other fungi make meals of
agricultural run-off and animal waste. The Remediators begin cleaning up the soil at landfills and mill sites, defunct
filling stations and power plants by first identifying the appropriate fungi for each site.
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Next, they enhance the necessary growing conditions so beneficial
microflora thrive; they finish off the contamination in a few months. Traditionally,
clean-ups involve either paving over the problem or removing the tainted soil from a site and hauling it somewhere else. Then,
it's either burned in a special incinerator or dumped in a landfill where -- with any luck -- it's sequestered to keep
contaminants from re-contamination soil or water. Removal and incineration
are expensive -- and only move the problem in big, costly, fuel-burning trucks. "We've
introduced a brand new. proven and tested, way of helping landowners," Sprouse said. Customers appreciate a safe, "green"
clean-up that saves the cost of hauling away contaminated dirt and buying new fill material. The Remediators can delineate wetlands, drill sample wells and evaluate
a site's environmental suitability -- a boon to would-be home-builders. Also, realtors and lenders are recognizing the value
of assessing the environmental conditions of a property, much the way home inspectors evaluate a building's condition.
Their "Green Light Soil Check Inspection" gives homeowners assurance
about their liability when selling a property or a clean bill of health when buying one.
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Working with the Business
Incubator @ Lincoln Center in Port Angeles, "we had no idea of connections and resources we were tapping into,"
Sprouse said. They received referrals to potential clients and investors and assistance in honing what proved to be an award-winning
business plan. Now a model for developing local businesses, the
Remediators also partner with Peninsula College, where Western Washington University science students earn credit and acquire
hands-on experience by running their lab tests. A dream opportunity
would be making the Rayonier mill site new again, to showcase the speed and simplicity of nature's own cleanup methods.
Walk in the woods and see the amazing variety of Olympic Peninsula's
fungi. Call them mushrooms or toadstools -- or identify delicacies like chantrelles -- but scads of fungi contribute to a
forest's health. Vivid, inconspicuous or microscopic, they're specialists, liberating various components of fallen vegetation
and enriching the soil. They may also provide a key to the future,
says O'Dell, a Ph.D. mycologist who once worked as a fungal expert for Washington's Olympic National Park. "Of the thousands of kinds of fungi in the Park, only a few have been looked
at. The basis for a new bio-diesel process, one that transforms wood into a fuel source may be there. Or medicines. Who knows?" Protecting fungi may be a major, unheralded benefit of Olympic National Park.
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