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32 | Frac Sand Insider May 2015 www.rockproducts.com News Green Earth started in Milliken, Colo., as a fairly routine reclamation business – seeding, commercial landscaping, soil and water man- agement. But when the bottom dropped out of the real estate de- velopment market in 2009, owners Bruce Sandau and Jim Daulton turned to the oil and gas felds for new opportunities. "We did storm water management, reseeding and general reclamation work for them, and the business has been good for us," Sandau said. But a specifc happenstance decades earlier on Sandau's family farm kept gnawing at his mind, and he was determined to make better a process that he saw as fawed. Having lived his entire life in Colorado, Sandau experienced the downside of traditional oil and gas land reclamation frst-hand. "I grew up farming, and we permitted oil and gas wells on the lands we owned," he stated. But when one of those drills had an unfor- tunate leak, the solution did not restore conditions to their original state. "The operator did a fantastic job and took care of us very quickly and thoroughly," he continued. "But it was the process itself, the best option at the time, that didn't work perfectly." That solution involved, and mostly still does involve, a complete excavation of the contaminated soil around the area, the hauling away of that soil for offsite remediation and the replacement of that dirt with new fll. The problem Bruce's family faced was the quality of the soil that was brought back in. "We were very picky about what was coming back in, and in the end, there was too much weed seed in the soil they brought. We operated a 400-acre sod farm, and the Bermuda grass that the new fll dirt contained ended up killing quite a bit of our sod. We were fghting it for a long time." Finding a Solution This is the problem Bruce wanted to fnd a solution for. And after gaining more organics experience, and working with partner frms A1 Organics and Harvest Quest, he began to realize that compost had the potential to remediate hydrocarbons. That eureka moment was the beginning of a cooperative development for a process since branded as HydroLoc Soil Amend. "This would not have been possible without this team effort," explained Sandau. "You can't just throw compost on drill cuttings and have it neutralized. It requires a very precise balance of mi- crobes, media and proper application." With the equipment, experienced labor and relationships with the oil and gas companies, Green Earth was well-positioned to bring the right solution to market. With decades of experience cre- ating composts with varying mediums to meet specifc applications, A1 Organics was the perfect partner to develop the product. And having worked academically and commercially on developing mi- crobial cultures that can effectively neutralize hydrocarbons, Har- vest Quest brought the specifc bacteria that gave HydroLoc Soil Amend its remediation qualities. As a team, an enormous amount of research, development and testing went into creating a solution that truly worked. "As you can imagine, there is a ton of regulation with the process," Sandau said. "But we worked through every variable: the volume of wet cut- tings, the level of hydrocarbons, the right amount of organics, the proper microbial cocktail. And we saw real results." The Outcome The outcome was an on-site remediation solution that could be completed in 30-45 days, allowing the hydrocarbon-contaminated cuttings to be treated in windrows alongside the drilling platform, tested and utilized for the revegetation of disturbed areas. The Hy- droLoc Soil Amend process was established. Because Colorado is one of the strictest states in the nation with regard to remediation regulation, the market was a perfect one in which to develop the process. By knowing that HydroLoc Soil Amend was able to satisfy Colorado rules, Sandau could feel more certain that there was a much broader market available. Having in- vested signifcantly in third-party testing to analyze, verify and confrm that the remediated cuttings (now classifed as a soil amendment) had non-detectable levels of hydrocarbons after the HydroLoc Soil Amend treatment, the process has become a mature solution. HydroLoc Hydrocarbon Remediation Process a Hit