Whole Life Times: Kevin Costner Makes Waves

August 2004 | Feature

Kevin Costner Makes Waves

Disturbed by the environmental messes we create, this leading man takes a stronger role in cleanup

by T.J. Sullivan

It’s been 15 years since Kevin Costner filled movie theaters across America with talk of cornfields and baseball diamonds, of dreams and second chances—15 years since a whisper planted the seed of an idea with the words, “If you build it, they will come.”

It’s time that shows in the corners of his eyes and in the lines that run from chin to cheek, creases that tend to make men look more distinguished than old, wiser rather than weaker. He wears an air of confidence, seemingly not the sort to suffer fools lightly, while at the same time entertaining the same question over and over again from the entertainment media: “Does it really seem like 15 years?”

Wearing a brown jacket similar to the one he wore in the poster for Field of Dreams, Costner promoted a special-edition anniversary DVD of the movie for Universal Pictures this summer. Standing beside a makeshift cornfield, he commented on how the film had come on the heels of another baseball movie in which he’d starred, Bull Durham— a rare feat in a genre that frequently strikes out at the box office.

But 1989 was an important year for Costner for another reason, too.

Just a month before Field of Dreams opened, shortly after midnight, on March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling some 11 million gallons of crude oil that eventually spread across 470 miles of ocean, harming an untold number of otters, fish and seabirds, which some studies suggest still haven’t recovered.

It sparked something in Costner, who grew up in coastal Ventura County. Within four years he’d sunk an untold number of dollars into Costner Industries Nevada Corp., a company dedicated to researching and developing ways to clean up oil spills quickly and efficiently.

“Why would I throw so much money and energy at a thing that hasn’t worked for seven or eight years and not give up on it?” Costner said in June. “I guess I’m just not that afraid of failure. I’m more excited about the success and what it might be.”

Costner was particularly interested in a liquid-liquid centrifuge, one of several devices the company developed. Demonstrated in Santa Barbara in 2001 on an imitation spill of water and diesel fuel, the centrifuge appeared similar in concept to a vacuum cleaner and the spin cycle of a washing machine. The tainted water was drawn into the centrifuge through a hose and the liquids separated. Company officials said the recovered fuel could be reused without any further treatment.

Two years ago, the company Costner began in Nevada spun into Costner Industries Texas, LP (www.cit-ind.com), a privately held partnership that holds several patents and is valued at about $35 million, according to company communications manager Patricia Martinez. CIT is now completely self-supporting and employs about 50 people, Martinez said.

Though Costner’s company is still researching applications to effectively clean up ocean spills—a problem that’s exacerbated by varying water temperatures, oil consistency and weather conditions—it has also developed other products that are being used from South America to Romania to clean up polluted sites.

“We’ll be all over the world,” Costner said, “because it’s a thing we have to do, which is clean up our messes. We have created them around the world. And so, I’ve invested my money in that idea.

“I’m a pretty dogged person, to the point of probably stupidity. But when I feel like something has a chance, I feel like it has value and it doesn’t work, I don’t think that ‘it’s not a good idea.’ I think, ‘maybe I didn’t do it right.’ So I make the fundamental decision: ‘Is it a good idea?’ And then I do everything I can to make it come through.”

Mixing Costner’s passion for the environment and his penchant for entertainment, however, is a bit more difficult. The two have gone together like oil and water at the box office, a point driven home by the disappointing performance of his film Waterworld, which envisioned Earth after the melting of the polar ice caps.
These days, when Costner walks the press line, the questions are less about his business interests than they are about his interest in businesswoman Christine Baumgartner, to whom he’s engaged.

For now, that’s the kind of spin that makes headlines.

For more information go to www.cit-ind.com.

T.J. Sullivan can be reached at [click to e-mail].

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