VENICE, Louisiana — Hollywood star Kevin Costner will be pitching in with the effort to avert environmental calamity threatened by the growing Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a local official.

Costner, star of "Waterworld" and "Field of Dreams," will be in the area on Thursday with his scientist brother Dan, where he will be demonstrating a type of water-oil separation device, said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish in southern Louisiana.

"Sometimes it takes a star to come in with their money and time to make a difference," Nungesser told reporters at Venice's Cypress Cove marina, at a press conference on the ongoing oil spill held by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

The Costner brothers founded the Costner Industries Nevada Corporation (CINC), and have in the past promoted an oil-water filtration system designed by Dan Costner to recycle oil, according to records of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Kurt Fromherz, Nungesser's spokesman, later told AFP that Costner was in the region "lending his support to the clean-up effort in any way he can."

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said earlier Wednesday that the "intellectual horsepower of the country is engaged in solving this problem," to stop an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil that is gushing daily from a sunken BP-leased rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The growing spill is threatening fragile ecosystems along the shoreline of Gulf states and is severely impacting the local economy as large swaths of federal waters have been shut down for fishing.