Developers turn Boom Blaster inventors

Local real estate developers Tim Pedigo and Greg Huntsman are knee-deep in a business venture that has nothing to do with real estate. It began with a private island nine miles southwest of Key West and BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“The short story of a long story is that the economy is upside down,” Pedigo said. “We were working on developing an island in the Florida Keys and were worried the oil spill would come our way.”

The developers made calls to find boom – barriers that are placed in the ocean as a first line of defense against oil spills – for Ballast Key island to protect their investment. Boom can be made of a variety of materials, but in general, “hard boom” can be decontaminated and reused, while “absorbent boom” is used once, to absorb oil, then shipped to landfills.

The big pitch
The two quickly began thinking about creating their own boom, made of an organic, absorbent material that could be processed and turned into biofuel. Pedigo and Huntsman formed Springfield-based Gulf Coast Environmental Resources LLC and made an appointment to pitch their idea to the U.S. Coast Guard, which was overseeing cleanup efforts in the Gulf Coast.

In June, the two met with Mark VanHaverbeke, who is in charge of researching new technologies for the Coast Guard.

VPN Haverbeke liked the idea of Gulf Coast Environmental’s organic absorbent boom, Pedigo said, but adding a new product to the oil spill toolshed wasn’t as big of a priority amid the cleanup efforts. The two did, however, walk away with an idea.

“He said the real hero would be someone who could figure out a better way to clean hard boom,” Pedigo said. “BP had 4.8 million feet of hard boom in the gulf, and they needed a way to clean it that was more cost-effective and efficient and safe.”

At the time, BP workers were decontaminating all of the hard boom by putting it on pallets and hand-washing the material, which usually comes in 100-foot sections, Pedigo said.

“I had people bent over scrubbing boom by hand in full Tyvek suits, and the weather at that time, the heat index was 105 and 110,” said Robert Kretzer, BP’s branch director of Jefferson Parish.

Pedigo designed a machine – known as the Boom Blaster – and asked friends J.F. Foster and Brian Templeton, who own St. Louis-based D&S Car Wash Equipment Co. to create a prototype that is much like a car wash for boom. The 4-foot-by-10-foot machine has a rail system that feeds boom into the washing system, where it is sprayed with a citrus-based presoak, followed by a scrubbing with a double set of brushes, and a final turbo-spray that blasts contaminants from the boom, Pedigo said. Foster and Templeton are now equal partners with Pedigo and Huntsman in Gulf Coast Environmental.

The time between the first meeting and when the Boom Blaster was put into use in the Deepwater Horizon incident response efforts was less than 30 days, Pedigo said. But the first prototype, which didn’t have a brush system, did need some modifications.

“I think they were somewhat set aback at the time they’d seen the condition of the oil and marine growth,” BP’s Kretzer said, noting that oil usually sits against the boom for a couple of days and builds up, and barnacles and other marine growth also attach to the material. “I had another meeting with them … we maybe had one or two e-mail conversations when they went back to the shop, and they came back within two weeks and said, ‘I think we’ve got it.’”

Gulf Coast Environmental now has two mobile Boom Blast units.

Boom Blaster in action
Gulf Coast Environmental set up the Boom Blaster in Grand Isle on July 29, Pedigo said, and worked around the clock cleaning boom until Sept. 30, when its contract with BP expired. Pedigo and Huntsman declined to disclose either their startup and development costs or the BP contract amount.

At this time, there is no plan to sell Boom Blaster units, Pedigo said. Rather, Gulf Coast Environmental hopes to pursue service contracts with environmental cleanup companies and government entities such as the U.S. Coast Guard. The company is based in Springfield because that’s where Pedigo and Huntsman call home, but they’ll travel to wherever there is a spill.

Kretzer, who is in charge of oil spill response inside of Jefferson Parish, said he couldn’t estimate how much the Boom Blaster saved BP in terms of decontamination expenses.
The Boom Blaster can process more than 10,000 feet of boom a day, Pedigo said, and on average, the machine cleans 600 feet an hour, versus roughly 200 feet an hour manually.

“They had 18 employees washing their boom. We had six on our line,” he said.
Kretzer noted the impact on workers was more important to BP than time efficiencies. “In my mind, it’s ergonomically efficient. I didn’t have people working in awkward positions for hours on end,” he said.

Next up
While Pedigo is the Boom Blaster’s designer and unofficial spokesman, Huntsman’s role is on the logistics and sales side.  The duo plan to build off their coastal contacts and have high hopes for more Coast Guard work.

“We’ve been told to follow up with them,” Huntsman said.

The Boom Blaster is a device that is specific to clean contaminated boom, and Pedigo noted that there is no shortage.

“There’s boom put out every day, for little spills and big spills,” he said, adding that boom also is used to protect against other containments, such as chemical spills or trash.

Gulf Coast Environmental hasn’t given up on its idea of an organic, absorbent boom, either, Pedigo said, noting nearly 1 million feet of absorbent boom was used in Jefferson Parish during the BP oil spill, and all of it will be put into a landfill. An organic absorbent boom that can be reused as biofuel is an attractive product to environmental cleanup companies, he said. “It’s going to be a big part of the deal,” he said.[[In-content Ad]]