County trying out wastewater 'elixir'

Byo-Gon: One man's snake oil
is another man's natural solution
PAUL SWIDER
The News Herald

Searching for a cure to wastewater
problems, Bay County may have stumbled on the
elixir of the next millenium.
"When I tell people about this stuff, they just
think it's snake oil," said Jack Serafin, who sells
Byo-Gon PX-109, a potion designed to improve the
performance of wastewater treatment plants. Bay
County has been using Byo-Gon on a trial basis for
a few months and will soon begin regular use.
Byo-Gon is not some dangerous chemical, Serafin
said, but rather comes from a substance derived
from certain plants. It acts on naturally occurring
bacteria to improve their efforts to purify sewage.
"It's so safe you can drink it," Serafin said.
Ironically, many people do. The active ingredient
in Byo-Gon is a plant compound called xeronine
that is found in Morinda citrifolia , or the Noni
fruit, of Hawaii and other Pacific Islands. Noni juice
has been used by Polynesian islanders for years.
Present-day marketers tout Noni juice as being a
salve for everything from cancer to impotence.
Unlike the curative properties, the wastewater
effects of xeronine are documented. Using like
principles of cell regeneration, xeronine manages to
make sewage-eating bacteria hungrier and more
efficient than they would otherwise be.
Steve McLellan, who oversees the county's
Cherry Street treatment plant, said he began using
Byo-Gon a few months ago with substantial
success. He said he needed the product to fend off
operational problems at the plant, not the least of
which were complaint-causing odors.
"We were about to drive out our neighbors,"
McLellan said of odors caused by incompletely
processed sewage. "We were out-stinking Stone
(Container) and Arizona (Chemical)."
With the Cherry Street plant overtaxed, McLellan
had been seeking ways to stretch its capacity short
of costly improvements that would be wasted when
the county opens a new plant in 1999. At first he
tried adding freeze-dried bacteria, which helped
some but not enough. So he tried Byo-Gon.
The xeronine in Byo-Gon is intended to act as a
stimulant for the existing bacteria, exciting their
activity despite the foul environment in which they
work. The bacteria are encouraged to do what they
would naturally, just at a pace and in a place they do
not find comfortable. Byo-Gon also promotes
specific kinds of bacterial growth that process
nutrients and consume things that smell.
No magic bullet, Byo-Gon has still greatly
improved odor problems at Cherry Street, McLellan
said, as well as shown positive signs of enhanced
overall performance. And Byo-Gon conservatively
will cost only $40,000 a year, about the same as the
frozen bacteria and well within budget. Structural
improvements would cost hundreds of thousands of
dollars, McLellan said. He said the new facility at
Military Point should not require products like
Byo-Gon.
Serafin, whose Lakepointe Environmental Group
Inc. in Palm City markets Byo-Gon for a Texas
company, lists numerous testimonials of Florida
municipalities that have used the product
successfully. Operators in cities such as Titusville,
Naples and even Perry say the product seems to
work as advertised and within projected costs.
Byo-Gon is not another bacteria nor is it a nutrient
or enzyme for bacteria. The xeronine in Byo-Gon is
a chemical precursor for enzymes that begin
bacterial processes. As Serafin's promotional
brochure states, xeronine acts as an "on switch."
Xeronine was discovered through research at the
University of Hawaii after a Dole pineapple
scientist separated it from fruit tissues. The
university later sought patents to use the substance
to treat burn victims as its stimulating effect can
speed healing. Apparently the xeronine in pineapple
is also present, along with a similar chemical, in
greater quantities in the Noni, a smallish
yellow-green fruit whose medicinal history is long
in the Pacific.
Noni juice, hard to swallow because of its bad
smell and taste, is said to be linked to the health and
longevity of island peoples. Claiming the same kind
of cellular activity as Byo-Gon, Noni marketers
suggest the fruit can spur cellular regeneration and
even enhance the immune system. Xeronine
discoverer Ralph Heinicke is quoted as saying the
alkaloid's effects on cellular proteins have a chain
reactive result on everything involving those
proteins, explaining how "the administration of
Noni juice causes an unbelievably wide range of
physiological responses.
"Some of the problems which drinking noni juice
might favorably effect are: high blood pressure,
menstrual cramps, arthritis, gastric ulcers, sprains,
injuries, mental depression, senility, poor digestion
atherosclerosis, blood vessel problems, drug
addiction, relief of pain and many others.
"Although this list looks like a page torn out of a
traveling medicine man's manual, it is probably
conservative."
Heinicke does not mention wastewater treatment
applications. Yet.