I love the scene in City Slickers where Jack Palance tells Billy Crystal “the secret to life is finding that ONE thing.” Billy asks, “What is that ONE thing?” Jack smiles and says “that’s what you have to find out!” Then Billy has to begin his odyssey to find that ONE thing in his life.

Treating wastewater, optimizing fermentations or solving bioremediation applications is a similar odyssey. We often find adding microbes alone is not enough? There is usually something missing, often just ONE thing missing. You may ask “what is that ONE thing?” I bet you can guess what I’m going to say next? “That’s for you to find out.”

Different from the movie, we aren’t going to pass away and leave you to struggle by yourself. We are here to help you find that ONE missing thing, which is usually different at each site. Sometimes the ONE thing missing is neutral pH, alkalinity, nitrogen, phosphorus, folic acid, cobalt (toxic), or a long list of many other ONE things. In some cases, such as bioremediation or my lawn this summer, the missing piece is water. They key to all of this is not to experiment on the site, but to allow us to do the testing to figure out that ONE thing for you in our lab. We will set up a series of experiments and attempt to uncover that ONE thing to make the natural micro flora and our complementary microbes take off like a rocket. We have seen it many times; the ONE thing is the difference between success and failure.

Leave the odyssey to Homer or Billy! Send us your waste samples and let us find the ONE thing for your customer’s site today.

– Michael R King, Ph.D.

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