Prestige Products in Grand Rapids adds 90 employees, makes booms to help clean up Gulf oil spill

A Business Review West Michigan report says nearly 90 new employees at a once-vacant Grand Rapids manufacturing facility are helping workers in the Gulf of Mexico clean up the BP oil spill.

According to excerpts from the story:

Few things are moving as fast as the 11-week oil spill across the Gulf of Mexico. It is spreading at the rate of 60,000 barrels a day. But nearly 90 new employees are giving chase at Prestige Products LLC Boom Division. They are working around the clock to create long booms to protect critical areas along the threatened coastline from encroaching oil.

Just two months ago, the plant at 2685 North Ridge Drive NW was a vacant 100,000-square-foot warehouse, and most of the people now working there were unemployed. When BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded April 20, a pipe 5,000 feet below sea level started spewing a gigantic plume of oil and gas into the Gulf.

Read the complete story here.