(WSBT) The push continues at BP's Whiting, Ind. refinery to find a balance between expansion and the environment. Now, a South Bend company says it may have the solution.

It's been nearly three months since BP announced it would stop a planned expansion at the plant unless contaminants being dumped into Lake Michigan could remain at their current levels. Since then, the oil giant has been searching for a way to do that, but told the Associated Press it's coming up empty so far.

But a South Bend company called Bioremediation says it has the answer. Bioremediation is one of just a handful of chemical companies in the country collecting a specific kind of bacteria from the ocean floor. They're called "microbes," and some are convinced they hold the key to a cleaner lake.

Millions of gallons of wastewater are dumped into Lake Michigan each day by BP and dozens of other companies in the U.S. and Canada.

Some of that wastewater contains trace amounts of ammonia and flecks of heavy metal and oil. In most cases, the wastewater has been treated to a level that experts call "clean." But it's not completely clean. BP has committed to reducing its output of toxins even further, but says so far it hasn't found an "easy fix."

Steve Kennedy says he has.

When asked if there was any reason for BP to dump ammonia into Lake Michigan, he replied, "No. I don't think there is. I don't think there is at all. We can show them how to eliminate it."

Kennedy says eliminating 100 percent of the ammonia now being dumped wouldn't be hard or expensive.

"We're only talking about putting in a couple holding tanks," he said.

He says a gallon of liquid containing more than 18 trillion microbes costs less than $40, and can help treat hundreds of gallons of wastewater.

Kennedy says the ammonia and other suspended solids in wastewater can be neutralized in a matter of seconds.

"We can get them non-detect with ammonia," he said. "It can be done."

And Kennedy says he's told BP exactly that.

When asked about their response, he replied: "No response."

But BP says that's not true.

Spokesman Scott Dean says the company is already using one strain of microbes now, and he says a chain of e-mails show they are taking a closer look at Bioremediation's potential solution.

"It's just too soon for anyone to make such an accusation," Dean said, referring to Kennedy's claim that the company is ignoring him. "I don't think somebody that hasn't piloted something in a heavy Canadian crude service at that scale can expect us to just drop everything and say that's the solution without fully studying it and saying it seems like a working pilot. We need to make sure what's proposed is proven, reliable, and dependable."

"From what I've seen, they do work," said Tom Anderson, director of Michigan City's Save the Dunes Council, who has been fighting BP's higher wastewater permit levels from the start.

He says he's talked with both Bioremediation and a California company called Global Sulfur Systems, and both already provide microbes to other oil companies, including Exxon Mobil and Conoco Philips, as well as the U.S. military. Kennedy says microbes are also being used at independent refineries in the south U.S. and the Middle East.

"That makes me very skeptical that BP has taken a close enough look at this a a potential solution to their wastewater issues," said Anderson.

BP says it's still looking for solutions though, and microbes may turn out to be one piece of the puzzle. But Dean says more work needs to be done to find out for certain.

"It's still too soon to tell," he said. "We expect to have some more answers within the next six months on the future of this project."