Diamond's Northeastern Professor Fitzgerald said, "It is only a matter of time" and Diamond wasted none, as in April of 1973, he traveled from Massachusetts to Concord, NH for a visit to the NH Department of Resources and Economic Development to try to find a list of shut-down hydropower dams in the state. He was given a folder. The details of one such dam caught his eye and he says, "The very next day I shot up here to Bath." At a time when many hydropower dams were being shut down, Diamond was bucking the trend to buy one.

"I looked out of a window in the Bath Covered Bridge. It was very dramatic," he says. "The place was for sale, but I had no money," he adds. The owner of the property was the late Paul Glover (92 years old), the owner of the Bath Fibre Company, which had closed.

Paul Glover must have liked what he saw in the aspiring businessman, because as Diamond puts it, "Paul Glover made it possible for me to be here." Diamond says the late Roland Currier; a loan officer for the Woodsville Bank was also a key in his purchase of the property.

With help from Glover, Currier and others, and Diamond's ingenuity and hard work, Granite State Metal and Woodworking Company built up very quickly in metalworking and as a manufacturer of hockey sticks, wooden display stands and other items. "We had some talented people working for us," Diamond says. And true to his environmentally conscious philosophy, it was hydropower that ran the company's machines.

But on the night of December 17, 1975, a fire caused by an electrical short leveled everything he owned. "I had absolutely nothing left," says Diamond. "I had just shipped an order and I had to wait for the funds to come in on that order. If I didn't have that, I wouldn't have had a cent." He rented a little machine shop next door and worked to bring back his business.

As with Paul Glover and Roland Currier previously, those he did business with must have liked what they saw. "Everyone of my suppliers agreed to supply me," he says. "I told them I would pay them when I could and by the end of the next year I had paid off all the accounts and had $1,000 left over," he remembers. "I then drove to every supplier and divvied up the money as a way to thank them. I was in tears, but I felt awesome," Diamond says.

From there he says the company built up slowly. "We went back into the mill and built and built," he says. The hydro dam went back online. The business manufactured using falling water for power. Today Diamond says,"The energy produced at this location produces more energy than the whole town of Bath uses. We produce clean low cost energy that offsets many thousands of barrels of oil. These are renewable resources that preserve our non-renewable resources."

And now still inspired, if not more, by Professor Fitzgerald's words coming to fruition, Diamond and his company, MOP Environmental Solutions, Inc are working hard to begin marketing the product, which he and his employees have been working on for the past 10-plus years- the product and system which allows for recovery of an oil spill and returning a clean environment.

The product, MOP (Maximum Oil Pickup) is a unique cellulose-based oil absorbent product, which can be used on land or water to recover the hazardous spill. Diamond says, "Our technology is a breakthrough that allows our company to apply what was a barrier to oil recovery on a global scale. " MOP changes what has been an exorbitant cost to a significant profit, when done on a large scale. Now, there is not only an environmental incentive, but also an economic one too for oil spill cleanup.

"Now we can pickup oil fast and efficiently and our process is competitive with drilling for oil." This product can recover thousands of barrels of oil a day from oil-laden waterways or land.

MOP technology allows oil-saturated land or water to be restored to its originalcondition, removing 99% of the oil. Diamond says his company has improved the process over the last ten or so years now. The product locks the oil in itself so that the oil doesn't continue to contaminate the environment.

Other features of the MOP system include equipment which will be used in recovery efforts: The MOP CANNON- which blasts MOP at 150 mph above or below an oil spill even in severe weather or turbulent waters; MOP CAT- Cleanup Aquatic Tool; MOP PET- Petroleum Extractor Tool and MOP RAM-Residue Attrition Tool, which produces pellets from the recovered MOP for pellet fuel.

Diamond says, "The bottom line is that everything used is separated and everything is recovered. When we finish, we have clean earth, water and oil. The oil is extracted from the MOP and that which remains is made into pellet fuel. Nothing goes to a landfill like with any other product. Our company does focus on solving environmental problems with renewable resources starting with the waterpower. We have created a recycling path."

One area of the world MOP Environmental Solutions will focus their attention on is acknowledged to be the largest oil spill to exist on the planet. This spill is in the Caspian Sea Region, where they have identified oil-laden land and waterways, which are in the thousands of acres, " says Diamond.

"This is a perfect site for the application of MOP CAT, our aquatic tool, which can recover up to 1000 or more barrels of pipeline quality oil per day. This is quality oil with a minimum of treatment," says Diamond. "With oil in excess of $100 per barrel and a cost of $.25 per gallon to recover, we are looking at netting revenues in the range of $50,000 to $100,000 dollars per day. One of the lagoons will support as many as 20 MOP CAT machines operating simultaneously for a period of one full year with a recovery of 1-2 million dollars per day. Diamond says the cost of one MOP CAT is about $100,000.

The company has been publicly traded since December 2007. "We anticipate that by going public, we can obtain the capital we need to distribute our products in the US and Internationally, " Diamond says. A plan to implement the project is underway and waiting for funding. Diamond says the company tries to draw expertise through the network of its shareholders.

MOP Environmental Solutions, Inc. currently has a West Coast distributor and an East Coast distributor, which is a NAPA Dealer in Littleton, NH. Charlie Diamond says, "I am encouraged. When this takes off it will be great for the area, as the project should employ 100-200 people."

A couple of businesses in the area are examples of MOP cleanup. A company was discharging vegetable oil into the drain, and was under pressure by the Environmental Protection Agency, used MOP in a basket, which was able to capture the oil. Another was a restaurant in St. Johnsbury, VT where an oil barrel flipped over in the basement and discharged oil into the flooded basement. The MOP captured the oil, was removed and the restaurant was back in business soon.

Diamond says historically there have been exorbitant costs associated with oil spill recovery. MOP is economically efficient and often that threatens those in the business who are not interested in being economical and efficient, he says. "It takes five pounds of MOP to tie up 150 pounds of oil and takes 1,500 pounds of a clay-based material to do the same. The clay ends up in a landfill and our product is recycled. There is only one product that does it all and MOP is it," he says.

Diamond says the company is currently looking for a celebrity affiliation or endorsement. "We would like to find a spokesperson to help expose the benefits of MOP. "

"We want to be known as the do-good company. We plan to channel funds to support do-good projects. "There are plenty of problems out there in which to support," he says.

Like the Greek Proverb says, Charlie Diamond may never sit in the shade of the many trees he has figuratively planted at his Bath businesses, but that does not seem to stop him from planting more. Professor Fitzgerald would likely be proud of the solutions for environmental problems persevered by one of his students, whom he inspired many years ago.

MOP Environmental Solutions, Inc is on the web at: www.mopenvironmental.com