BP looks to trees to clean old Ill. refinery site

WOOD RIVER -- Energy behemoth BP says it's taking a green approach to clean up a former disposal site along the Mississippi River, planting some 3,500 trees expected to help remove petroleum and chemical compounds at the former oil refinery.

BP unveiled the project Thursday at the 24-acre site near this St. Louis suburb, calling upon the trees -- willows, cottonwoods or poplars, river birches, bald cypresses and white swamp oaks -- to draw in the tainted groundwater and perhaps break down the toxins.

Tom Tunnicliff, BP's environmental business manager, said about 20 percent of the trees are expected to die in the process and will be replaced as needed.

The property filled with water during the Great Flood of 1993, and high water levels remain because of the clay-lined disposal site's bathtub-like construction. The trees will take up that water.

The pit had not been used since the 1990s, when most refinery operations there stopped.

Tunnicliff said BP has paid $450,000 for research, lab studies, pilot projects and the trees, all with the approval of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

Using the trees, Tunnicliff said, was more cost-effective, aesthetically appealing, safer and energy efficient than pumping the water out mechanically, with the trees eventually providing habitat for birds and other animals.

A pilot program testing the process was done about a decade ago, but very few of those trees remain because whitetail deer bucks damaged many of them by rubbing their antlers against them to clear off dried skin. Bucks also rub the scent gland on their forehead against trees during rut.

A fence has been placed around the property, not visible to the public, to discourage deer.