Technology Corridor

Vegetation that helps break down toxins debuts at manufactured gas plant site.

Planting swaths of rye grass and mulberry trees and sowing the soil with bacteria are hardly standard operating procedure when it comes to cleaning up manufactured gas plant sites. But if Bill Bogan has his way, it just might be.

Bogan is an environmental microbiologist at the Gas Technology Institute. For the past year and a quarter, he has been working with Washington Gas in an experiment to see whether phytoremediation-using plants and biological materials to sequester or metabolize toxic materials from polluted soil and water-can work to clean up some of the 1,500 to 5,000 manufactured gas plant (MGP) sites scattered across the country.

If the experiment succeeds, remediation costs at some MGP sites could be halved, at least if Ford Motor Co.'s experience is any guide. Ford used phytoremediation at its River Rouge site to clean up 30 acres polluted with polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Those PAHs, the byproduct of coke production on the site many years ago, are very similar to the waste produced by MGPs. Ford spent more than $900,000 on its phytoremediation project, but the company says it would have spent another $1 million on cleanup had it used traditional remediation methods. Rather than carting away 5,700 cubic yards of soil, Ford needed only to dispose of a few cubic yards of toxic plants.