Starting Microbial Remediation

Fuel on top of the groundwater in the bailer.

In the medical world, doctors are highly specialized. You wouldn't go to a podiatrist if you had heart trouble, right? While both are doctors, each has spent years mastering different areas. The same principle applies to remediation.

When gasoline or diesel leaks into the soil or groundwater, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. You have to consider multiple factors: the amount of fuel spilled, the type of soil it seeped into (silt, sand, clay...), the depth of the spill, and its potential impact on people (whether it's near a water supply well, in a utility trench, or could cause vapors in a basement). All these factors, along with the time and cost of cleanup, help determine the best way to tackle the mess.

I've got a leaking underground storage tank site that's ideal for microbial remediation. Just like in the doctor scenario, I reached out to a top expert in the microbial field, Tim Goodpasture from Advanced Microbial Services in Tulsa, OK. Tim has been using and selling microbes for over forty years. Through extensive research, field tests, and successful clean-ups, Tim has perfected a special blend of microbial species that break down petroleum hydrocarbons.

His microbial solution is packed with nutrients to help establish the microbial colonies and nourish them as they grow. Once they're established, they consume hydrocarbon chains as their food source, breaking down large molecules into smaller, safer forms that nature can easily finish off.

Our injection permit and Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) are approved, and we've already gained pre-approval from the state regulatory agency to perform a microbial remediation event. We're going to naturally degrade the historic fuel floating on the groundwater.

We kicked off our event by gauging the site's sixteen monitoring wells. My husband and field technician, Garry (right), used our oil/water interface probe to measure the depth to water and the free product thickness in each well. Tim Goodpasture, from Advanced Microbial (left), obtained water samples from select wells for analysis at his laboratory. Tim will determine the species of native microbes and their numbers to prepare a proprietary blend of microbes and nutrients for our specific site. Once that's done, we will return to inoculate the entire site.