VIDEO: Dances With Oil -- Kevin Costner Lends Help To BP Spill
June 14 2010, Published 8:44 a.m. ET
Kevin Costner has spent more than 15 years and $20 million on developing a device designed to separate oil from water, and the device is currently being tested by oil company BP in their quest to stop the ongoing oil spill in Gulf of Mexico, the Oscar winning director and actor told Good Morning America on Monday.
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"I'm not a spokesman for anybody, but the ecosystem can't speak for itself," Costner said. "They're wondering where an answer is. And I'm not on a white horse. I'm not the savior to this thing.
"But I'm kind of saying, ‘I've got a life preserver,’" the Field of Dreams star said.
Costner said that he was inspired to come up with such a device after both working on the 1995 film Waterworld, and seeing 11 million gallons of oil spilled into Prince William Sound in the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989.
"When I saw everyone on the shore with rubber boots and pitch forks in 1989, trying to clean up the problem that they didn't create, it was all very, very sad," he said. "So I went ahead and said, 'does this have to happen? If 20 of my devices would have been at the Exxon Valdez, 90 percent of that oil would have been cleaned up within the week."