The Experimental Lakes Area, west of Vermilion Bay is getting $1.1 million to help clean up oil spills.
Genome Prairie is providing the funding to make man-made marshlands using old plastic bottles in artificial platforms.
Reno Pontarollo is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the company, and he says it actually has very diverse uses.
“This is a technology they can just install on the water” says Pontarollo, “…it over winters, they can inoculate it every year, birds can nest on it. It will actually naturally remediate any contamination that is in there, whether it is a chemical fertilizer or an oil spill.”
Madeline Stanley is the project coordinator and says she is doing her PhD on the issue.
““ (I’m) looking at the plant and bacteria relationship on the floating wetlands themselves. I’ll (also) be looking at how we can optimize that to naturally degrade oil on the islands.”
A total of $4.4 million is being earmarked over the three years of the FLOWTER project.
Thrilled to announce today, next to beautiful #Lake240, that @GenomePrairie and @MitacsCanada have generously donated $1.1M to our research on oil spills. Now we can explore if these boxed beauties could be the answer to cleaning up oil spills… https://t.co/hZn8NJMhul pic.twitter.com/GGaCGlLt9s
— IISD Experimental Lakes Area (@IISD_ELA) August 30, 2019
