Kevin Costner returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday to talk to lawmakers about his machines that will help pick up the oil in the Gulf.
"I'm not on a white horse," the actor said. "I'm not the savior to this thing. But I'm kind of saying, like, I got a life preserver."
Costner, who spent more than $20 million and 15 years developing the machines, said: "If 20 of my V20s would have been at the Exxon Valdez, 90 percent of that oil would have been cleaned up within the week."
BP has contracted with the actor and a company called Ocean Therapy Solutions to use 32 of their centrifuge machines, which can clean oil from more than 200,000 gallons of water a day. A BP spokesman said the company tested the machines and was "very pleased by the results."
Said Costner: "We have to treat it a little bit like a war. ... We have to muster everything we can to keep it from hitting our beaches."
SPILL MAY HAVE KILLED SPERM WHALE
Over the past few weeks, the carcasses of oily pelicans, turtles and other animals have washed to shore in the Gulf of Mexico. Now a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship has discovered the first dead sperm whale since the April 22 disaster.
Blair Mase, the Southeast marine mammal stranding coordinator for the oceanic agency, said that scientists were "very concerned" that oil was the cause of the whale's death, but that the whale's body was so decomposed and scavenged by sharks that it would be impossible to say for certain. The whale's body was found Tuesday 77 miles south of the spill, NOAA said.
WHITE HOUSE BLASTS BARTON FOR COMMENTS
The White House is firing back at a lawmaker who used part of his time at a congressional hearing on the Gulf oil spill Thursday to criticize the victims' compensation fund.
