A bud begins to develop!
I looked over the lay of the land before me. It was better than it had been described to me in ongoing chats with the Epa. Chris Devereau, one of Epa's upper management team with experience in the industry longer than my years, had been trying to convince me for over three months to get me to look at this place.
It took him quite a while, but he finally wore me down. He had been right. The land was perfect for proving on a large scale that the two microorganisms I had patented would work. He had gotten extremely interested in my microorganisms when a story about them had been published in an insiders ecology magazine.
In his office, we had looked at a few topological maps of the area. What intrigued me was the huge supply of water available to this area. One of the craters at the top of the mountain had water almost to its top collected over years of melting snow.
We went to google maps and got a detailed, closer look at it. It was clear that the water had no natural way to escape to the outside and that it was just a matter of time before it would start spilling over. It was a resource that could help me greatly if we went forward.
If we could blow out a section of its rock rim, we could create a manmade waterfall to provide the steady water supply I would need for both the rotting process and the making of the soil. The only major problem I saw was working out the little difficulties that come with any location to make a smooth operation.
Before driving into the site, I had rented a helicopter for two days to fly me over the lake, the crater, and the overall site. Using a high-definition camera, I took digital images for closer inspection during the evenings. I am glad I did because I discovered a few things that I would have not seen from the ground's point of view.
Part of the mountain's crater had a very thin side with a flat surface that faced the area I was looking at. The crew, supplies, and equipment could be Heli ported in to do the work needed. If opened the way I wanted, it meant the built-up ice on the west side of the crater would receive more sunlight providing an added water supply for years.
The site had three huge flat areas off to the side. Once stripped of its timber they would serve well for what I needed. One would become our soil making area, the second the site for a concrete making operation, and the last the largest a sorting area.
All it had taken to get me to this point was a genetic modification of two microorganisms which allowed me to create two new ones. Since most microorganisms were single-cell it was quite simple. It took three years of diligent research to find a way to make it work. The key had been to change the genetic code of the new microorganisms I had created.
It was now a proven fact thanks to my discovery that when natural rotting was taking place chemicals like arsenic and others that we added to the mixture would be converted into a gas form by these new microorganisms. The key was collecting this gas so it could be burnt off if a certain pattern were followed. The new microorganisms I created by merging the right ones had been proven to be environmentally safe.
I was currently standing about twenty-two miles from an abandoned gold mine that had long ago stopped producing. There was still gold in it, but they had been stopped by the feds because of the trailing's built up over time by mining it. Now with the price with a troy ounce of gold, if it could be reopened it would be a nice security blanket for someone.
That was one of the reasons I was interested in this area. The surrounding mountains were rich in iron ore and would be prime for harvesting. The problem with mining was the same problem that I might be dealing with. That was the safe removal and disposal of the stockpile of contaminants that would be created because of it.
The area I was looking at was the remnants of an extremely large stripped mine that had naturally been reforested by Mother Nature since it was abandoned. Like the gold mine, it was now owned by the state. Once cleared of the marketable forestation it would be a perfect spot to see if my theories would work.
The problem with the gold mine was that the holding ponds were beginning to collapse and the Epa was afraid that the chemicals they contained, because of the size of them would soon start leaking and flow into the river system.
It was not what was in them that bothered them because they were all natural minerals found within the earth, but it was the concentration of them. Because of the density If the problems were not resolved soon, it could kill the river eco-system downstream for years.
Since the ecological system of two countries, Canada and the United States would be affected, they could not afford to wait. Canada was aware of the problem and they had quietly been applying pressure to the Epa for years.
My instructors at university had been amazed when the saw those little things at work in the small tests we did multiple times with them. Using everyday garbage that we all help to make, we added topsoil, the microorganisms, and the dangerous chemicals we wanted to get rid of. We watched through the glass the slow evolution as the waste was consumed and changed. The gas created had burned for sixty-four days before the flame died out.
After taking the new soil out we tested it, searching for the dangerous chemicals we had put in. Not a trace of them could be found. Nor was there any in the carbon dioxide created by the burning of the gas. The process I used I called 'Bianhua' which is the Chinese word for transformation was a proven success.
Twenty-seven times we conducted the same test with different amounts and the results always came back the same. The university brass had been upset that I had patented it because the thought it would be worth billions for them.
During the same time, I had discovered an enzyme that would dissolve most household plastics turning it into a liquid state and that when finishing evaporating, left chalk-like residue. We found the residue was mostly a calcium based compound. The testing of that material proved it did not do any damage to the environment. Both microorganisms would die out naturally when their reason for being no longer existed.
Nobody knew that what I had done had been derived from the principles had been taught to me by my adopted father. His understanding of how mother nature worked was extreme. It was just something they had normally done to deal with the trash they created in their community. It was his actions that inspired the creation of the microorganisms. I took his understanding of Mother Nature and how things worked to find a process to restore what we could in an environmentally safe manner.
It had been simple to put together once I understood that all chemicals were all naturally made and had not been a problem for years until we humans began disrupting the natural cycle of things created by Mother Nature. I produced the process that would, in part, restore the balance to what we had disturbed.
The problem with implementing my invention was that it required space, time, and a steady supply of rotting material to restore what had taken Mother Nature billions of years to mold. It was the rotting process that was the key to making it all work. Rotting caused Mother Nature's natural tools, a group of microorganisms, to absorb the chemicals. I had found a way to convert these invisible microorganisms into a gas which, when collected could be burned.
Since I had just graduated, the Epa wanted to see if I thought my process would work in this isolated location. For the last two weeks, I had been camping in the area getting a deep understanding of the lay of the land, determining what could be salvaged and what had to be modified to come up with a plan to go large scale at this location.
At the end of each day, I would send Chris a progress report with what I had learned. One of the things I pointed out was the lack of normal wildlife. The amount of animal and bird bones around the containment ponds was sickening. With a few adjustments and a lot of prep work, I decided this would be a perfect spot to try my experiments on a large scale.
I had found a few trails that may of being used by dirt bikers, or maybe hikers out for an afternoon walk. For some reason, the gravel road that wove through the surrounding mountains to this location had been kept up. Still, it was going to have to be built up and paved.
To be able to show that my theory and enzymes would work I would have to use man-made garbage on a large scale. The biggest problem in mind would be finding it. I was about a two-hour drive by road to the closest city called Richmond, in Washington State, in the middle of the Rockies. With a population of about fifty thousand what they produced in garbage was a drop in a bucket. The road between the two abandoned mines locations could only be completed by using a four-wheel off-road all-terrain vehicle.
The strip mine was huge and had been built into the sides of two mountains. They had started in a huge circle slowing working their way down until the pocket of mineral deposit was completely tapped out. In doing such they had taken out an equal amount of the side of two mountains. The overgrown road down was wide enough for two huge mine trucks to pass each other.
On the road down they had cleared out and leveled off huge sections, all of which I could use for various parts of my overall plan. It had taken me over two hours to ride my all-terrain vehicle down from the top.
I took out my cellphone and called my contact in the Epa hoping he had not left early because it was a Friday. He answered my call right away.
"Look," I said. "It is doable but it's going to cost a lot of money for the startup. The old strip mine is going to need the regrowth of timber taken out. The road between the gold mine and here needs to be cleared and repaired to allow heavy-duty trucks to move freely back and forth. We are lucky since for now there is not a major natural water flow system in this area for us to be concerned about."
