When Hurricane Katrina hit Biloxi, MS, RespirTek Inc. had recently moved to new facilities tripling the size of its lab. Most of the company’s employees evacuated to San Antonio, Georgia, and New Jersey before the storm hit. B.J. Hook, chief executive officer of RespirTek and Jerry Hodges, vice president and chief financial officer, rode out the storm in the corporate offices, which were down in a pine savanna hollow. The wind speeds above the building’s roof blew at 130 mph, but near the front door of the building they were only 30-50 mph. For being one of the cities within 20 miles of “ground zero” for Katrina’s devastating impact, RespirTek fared reasonably well. Its employees were back at work within a week and a half. The company only had to deal with downed trees, and a little shingle damage.
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| Dynamic microcosms using respirometric technology (a Challenge AER-200, by Challenge Technology) provide real-time monitoring of microbial activity. |
About three days after the storm hit, the sounds of human life began to return, as airplanes and helicopters started to reach the area. “Once we lost power, we had no idea how bad the destruction was,” says Hodges. “In the end we were one of the luckiest businesses left standing. The lab was without power for 17 days, a difficult situation for any laboratory setting.”
The lack of power meant the loss of RespirTek’s onsite microbiological seed tanks. These contained years of work with a wide variety of microbial cultures from all around the US. The contents in the seed tanks are in liquid form and must be aerated constantly in order to keep the microbes alive. Because the samples in these tanks were from all over the country, including Alaska, this loss was especially difficult. “Some of these microbes were acclimated to some of the most toxic substances found in this country,” says Hodges. “Therefore the acclimated microbes that we had were able to consume some of the worst contaminants that we experience in our water and soil testing around the US. It is nearly impossible to duplicate these microbes unless we have projects in those same areas once again, but who knows when we’ll get another project in Alaska? These microbes had to survive under some extreme conditions of temperature. To lose these was significant for us. But compared to many people, we are extremely fortunate.”
Hodges says that most of the wastewater treatment plants, especially if they were close to the Gulf, lost their biomass as a result of Katrina. This biomass has to be rebuilt in order for any treatment to begin again. “Five months after the storm hit, the cleanup is still going on,” says Hodges. “It is hard to imagine what it’s like until you’ve been here and have seen it.”
“Office computers can always be backed up and don’t usually have a problem during extended power outages,” says James Radich, the laboratory’s engineering manager. “Data only has to be salvaged then. But in the lab it is crucial to maintain power. If we’d been running a microcosm study in our respirometer, that would have been a study completely lost. It could have been disastrous. We were lucky not to have had anything running at that time.”
In the aftermath of the storm, RespirTek’s main office and the lab became a focal point in the Biloxi community by helping out with telephone and internet communications.
“My mother had been assistant civil defense director during Hurricane Camille in 1969,” says Hook. “I remembered Camille very well, spending the day of the storm in the civil defense headquarters in Pascagoula. They actually used old teletype machines to communicate from one location to another then. But no one had any idea what to expect with Katrina. It was surprising how quickly cell phones became useless. Another one of the biggest issues was the gas stations’ inability to supply fuel so people could go check on their loved ones. ”
“RespirTek really made a sound business and humanitarian decision to invest itself in the community and the restoration efforts down there and has done a great job at this,” says David Hull, senior geologist and technical leader with LFR Inc., an environmental engineering group involved with geosciences, engineering, and toxicology work. “When the storm hit, for about a week or so I had no clue if RespirTek was still around or not. They are now doing an awful lot to help maintain many related industries in that region. I was really impressed with their response to the community at large as well as their luck in keeping their own infrastructure in place.”
Measuring Bacterial Respiration
For five years RespirTek Inc. has supplied onsite wastewater systems throughout the US with valuable information to help them operate more efficiently and to solve toxicity and treatability issues. The seven-employee laboratory does everything from bioremediation to customizing wastewater treatment systems with the proper microbes or enhancements for their systems. Most of the company’s clients are in Florida and California. No matter where the sample may be drawn, it can be shipped by overnight delivery in ice coolers so that testing can be completed in RespirTek’s Biloxi lab.
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| A nitrogen-filled glove chamber is used for sample preparation in anaerobic biological activity testing. |
In a nutshell, one of RespirTek’s main strengths is its ability to monitor and measure the breathing or respiration that microorganisms do using respirometric technology—hence the company’s name. The company has worked for industrial companies that discharge to public treatment works as well as the individual public treatment works. Both sides, therefore, know what is discharged and what is received.
Client industries are able to do one of three things: characterize a wastestream that has not been discharged previously; characterize a wastestream as one that is currently being produced but that needs to have its concentration increased by increasing the discharge rate; or characterizing a wastestream as one that has a material change in the industrial effluent requiring a look at toxicity or treatability issues. “There are several benefits for the wastewater treatment facility in this,” says Hook. “One is that they get an increase in the amount of industrial effluent they can surcharge, either based on organic loading or sheer volume. This is a win-win situation for the industry as well; it can discharge more effluent at a cheaper rate and the municipality can surcharge appropriately, adding revenue to their coffers. The second benefit is that if they know there are going to be any toxicity issues to their biomass—since the municipalities are responsible to the public that is also paying for a portion of the treatment—then they are assured of having some safety net in not damaging the biomass and impacting their public.”
According to Hook, municipalities surcharge significant industrial users (SIU), based on volume or else loading, depending on the organic content. “A municipality cannot simply surcharge the public for a private company’s usage,” says Hook. “For the SIU the upshot here is that there can be a difference in treatment costs, by as much as one to two cents per gallon for municipal treatment, as opposed to 20 cents per gallon or more to have the effluent pumped into trucks and hauled off. In many instances this is an actual improvement in treatment efficiency.”
If a particular industry is releasing a chemical that affects the bacteria, there will be a growth curve that can be measured. If the concentration of the chemical does not decrease and the bacterial growth curve declines, RespirTek can determine exactly what is happening from a toxicity standpoint.
If RespirTek measures biomass bacteria respiring faster, it means they have to be multiplying. “Bacteria respire, or “breathe,” at one rate only. So, if there is a measurable increase in breathing there must be a large number of bacteria or ‘bugs’. And the only way bacteria can multiply is if they eat,” says Hook. “They cannot simply reproduce themselves, so as a result we measure both breathing and how much they are consuming too. This indicates various chemical or substrate consumption rates for what the bacteria are doing.”
“We use a refined technique of respirometric science for following all this interrelated activity, coupled with conventional chemical tests. We used five different types of respirometers: Challenge; N-CON; Strathkelvin; Techline; and a sub-type of respirometer made by YSI. Our real workhorse is the Challenge. We match the sample matrix and the goal of the project to the best-fit respirometer type. Some are better used for wastewater toxicity testing and others are best for long-term bioremediation studies. In essence, the respirometer is as versatile and direct a measure of biological activity as a gas chromatograph is to organic chemical analyses.”
The company also does a test for biofuels to determine if the process that is being used produces volatiles and gasses that may then also be used.
When biofuels are created there are often waste gases which can be used as a fuel, from settings such as feedlots or landfills. The lab can suggest additives to facilitate the process and optimize the output of those resulting biofuels.
Bioremediation
“The fact that people can take the results from our tests and improve the treatment of their wastewater, groundwater or soil and not have to guess about things anymore, is extremely rewarding for us,” says Hook. “I feel there are very few downsides to being in the area of service we are in.”
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| Sample preparation for microsms requires close attention to detail . |
She is especially proud of some work the company did on a San Francisco Bay fuel pipeline spill in 2003. The California pipeline released a spill of approximately 2,500 barrels of diesel fuel into a sensitive wetland environment. RespirTek was contracted to do the bioremediation feasibility determination. In 11 days they were able to turn around all the analyses, including monitoring the microorganisms. The work showed what needed to be added to the marshy area of the diesel spill so that this sensitive ecosystem could restore itself as quickly as possible.
After the initial containment and recovery of product, samples of contaminated soil and groundwater were taken to characterize the microbes present at the site. The high salinity and low pH made work even more challenging in the salt-marsh environment of Suisun Bay. The study and project area was 6–8 acres in size.
Hull agrees: “This was a tough area to work with from a bioremediation standpoint because the soils in this remote location are so soft; with that and the high saline and low pH conditions, there were few alternatives for dealing with the spill on this site. As a result we ended up taking a bunch of soil and water samples to RespirTek to determine just what microorganisms were present. We received a report from the company identifying the microbes, how many were present, what type of respiration they were capable of under baseline conditions, what kinds of nutrient limitations might be on the system and how we might go about giving them what they needed to degrade the petroleum hydrocarbons.”
Only two species of microbes were identified as present in soil and water at the site, and at very low populations. Fortunately, they both turned out to be hydrocarbon emulsifiers and degraders. The environment also had a strong phosphorus limitation on the system. RespirTek was able provide data to support the design of a nutrient that contained some nitrogen, but was primarily phosphorous to specifically address the nutrient limitation for this environment. “Because many contaminated microbiological systems are deficient in nitrogen, EPA wanted to apply ammonium nitrate to the site in an attempt to stimulate biodegradation. However, RespirTek’s identification of the specific microbes present allowed us to also determine they were sensitive to high nitrate concentrations, and the application of ammonium nitrate not only would have addressed the real nutrient deficiency (phosphorous) but would have probably killed all the microbes present in the first place and thus sterilized the site,” says Hull. “We were able to sidestep that and come up with a better nutrient mix through our work with RespirTek and by using some specialized tilling equipment so we could get out there and turn up all the impacted soils in place to get oxygen into them as well as the fertilizer.”
Hull and his group were able to successfully reduce the diesel concentrations on the site to below the local regional board’s risk levels in a very short period of time. The two microbes indigenous to the site responded well, increasing their populations by over three orders-of-magnitude, and were highly capable of digesting the diesel fuel from the spill. The addition of orthophosphates and a small amount of nitrate-free nitrogen along with careful monitoring along way did the job. The work was supported through the evaluation of biomarkers—various molecular analogues associated with biodegradation—to confirm that biodegradation in fact was occurring.
Hull has been involved with eight different projects with RespirTek now. “We’ve had a mutually beneficial relationship as well as developing a lot of respect for each other,” says Hull. Some of the projects the two companies are working on together involve research with various universities in the US and Canada and with the EPA on various initiatives. For Hull, working with RespirTek has meant receiving much more rapid communication and information about the microbes his group was dealing with in the various conditions. “In the past, with standard microcosms, tests were run for up to a year at a time, and we only saw the results, period, rather than the important interactions between a bunch of these parameters and the microbes, as well as interactions between competing microbes,” says Hull. “The application of the respirometry in providing real-time data on the performance of the microbes and nutrient utilization is what is so valuable. We can see what is being done right now so that better decisions can be made on what you want to look for in the microcosms and evaluations of system performance in general.”
Still Testing the Waters
As this story is being written, much of Biloxi is still in the throes of extensive debris removal. The restoration or remediation activities for the city are just getting under way. “But what we have done in the interim has been to take all the computers—our office and our lab are in two locations—once the power returned, and open them up to the business park,” says Hook.
After the storm, RespirTek began reconstructing things, including its services, which soon included a hurricane response program for handling the current environmental contamination. “We are now trying to position ourselves to be better prepared for any sort of environmental event or activity that may happen to us, or other areas of the country similarly affected,” says Radich. “But currently everything in the region still remains in ‘debris-removal mode’. The real environmental work will probably not start for another month or two, until everything is out of the way.”
RespirTek has also acted as a distribution center for Hach Co., a large manufacturer of testing equipment. Hach donated up to $45,000 dollars worth of equipment as well as an official training specialist for the kits so that those in the three counties involved could learn to use the kits. They were distributed to wastewater treatment plants, engineering firms, nonprofits and anyone else who could use them. Any place that did not have its own laboratory facilities usually sent its samples to RespirTek for evaluation. Another area lab, the Ocean Springs, MS-based MicroMethods Laboratory Inc., which works more with chemical evaluations than biological, also helped out. “In the throes of the disaster, with a number of municipalities completely leveled, we were able to get our field test kits out,” says Hook. “These kits helped any in the region who needed this information for testing, such as tests for iron, residual chlorine or organic oil content and many other different substances in the water. We worked on that ‘aftermath’ project for nearly two months.”
RespirTek basically served as a “host” lab at this time, handling the donated equipment. “Because other labs in the area weren’t up and running and FedEx was unable to deliver, we had a whole cascade of problems involved in trying to track people down to get the test kits in their hands,” says Hook. “Our main objective was supporting them in getting their wastewater treatment plants back up into operation as soon as possible.”
“Since we have reorganized things, post-Katrina, this has really helped relieve Hook from the many things she was doing,” says Radich. “Now she can focus much more on business instead of the technical and the logistical aspects. But the bottom line is that we are a flat-line organization. We set the egos aside and solve the problems as they come up. This is the best team I’ve ever worked with.”
Hodges says the environmental part of cleanup in the area hasn’t even really started yet. “The EPA and the Sierra Club are involved with testing now,” says Hodges. “But much of our activity so far has been to be in touch with the major engineering firms that will get these cleanup contracts to let them know that we are up and running, capable and viable to assist in the environmental phase of the restoration. That’s our current focus.”
As of Jan. 1, things have been back to normal for RespirTek, according to Hook. “We’ve had to go through a major marketing effort just to let folks know that we were still in existence,” says Hook. “We would get calls, e-mails and all kinds of feedback from clients stating they were amazed that we are still here. Many of our existing clients knew where we were located. They were flabbergasted that we were alive and kicking. ‘Look, guys,’ we said to everyone, ‘we’re not only alive—we want your business’!”
Another effort that the company put together after Katrina was to approach the three other testing companies that handle tests that RespirTek does not do internally and form an alliance, called Gulf States Response Group, to make available virtually anything that can be tested in the region. “The other labs really did this to help out the area,” says Hook. “It was all designed in response to all the professional outpouring of ways to help after the disaster. Through the formation of this group, we have been able to handle any and every type of testing situation, with the exception of electron microscope work. But we literally will do everything else.”
Looking to the future, Radich considers this “green” company to be on the cutting edge of technology in this area of environmental work. “In addition to such technology as that which will coax microbes already in place into degrading contaminants, we are also looking into options such as setting solar panels on our roof and changing the lab completely over to solar energy,” says Radich. “I have also done some extensive discussion and research with GE on when they are going to be releasing their commercial/semi-residential fuel cells. We would definitely be interested in installing these at our lab.”
“Of course right now we’re just glad our buildings survived,” says Hook. “But we were very happy to be able to help the many others who were not as fortunate as we were.”
PETE HILDEBRANDT is a writer specializing in science and engineering topics.
OW - May/June 2006 |
