"Lethal cyanide poured daily from the Homestake Mine's gold processing plant into South Dakota's Whitewood Creek. Mercury, arsenic, and sewage thickened the toxic flow.... A Homestake biochemist said "I thought bacteria could do it [clean up the cyanide]. I collected samples of water exposed to the poison. They held cyanide-tolerant bacteria that actually feed on the poison's carbon and nitrogen. We designed... a series of tanks in which the cyanide effluent moves slowly past feeding bacteria. It worked.""....Groundwater Technology, Inc. of Norwood, Mass [are] specialists in treating polluted groundwater and soil. They have used the technology of bioremediation to clean up hundreds of sites around the world...".....[The author] sought out some sore spots... a Superfund project on the lower Mississippi... the soil [was] black with contaminants --- more than 200 toxic compounds.... [A biochemist with Louisiana St. University] identified bacteria that were already eating the pollutants and encouraged them to reproduce. [They were] applied to a contaminated test site. In nine months they cleaned it up."....Aviation fuel had been leaking from [a Traverse City, Michigan Coast Guard] station's underground tanks, maybe for decades. Its invisible plume had moved a mile with the groundwater [contaminating wells]. Traverse Group, Inc, a bioremediation firm, drilled interdiction wells to pump out the fuel at the station boundary. The effect on the plume was astonishing. With the spread of the spill halted, the indigenous soil microbes quickly did their work, and the plume collapsed on itself. After 18 months no trace of it was found beyond the station." [End of excerpt]
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