A One-Town Drive for Energy Self-Sufficiency

By MONICA DAVEY

REYNOLDS, Ind. — This corn and soybean and hog farming town, which pops up out of nowhere at a crossroads and disappears as fast, has only 533 residents left. As in many withering rural communities, worries here lean toward keeping the school open, persuading sons and daughters to stay and finding a role for small farms in a changed economy. But a different worry has risen here, too.

With government financing and help from state agriculture officials, Reynolds is wrestling with the nation's dependence on ordinary energy supplies and starting a one-town rebellion. Some say the goal may be too ambitious, too fantastic, for any place, much less little Reynolds. True, most of the plans are just that, for now. But in the end, the town wants to secede from America's energy grid, and power itself entirely with renewable sources, like its corn and pigs.

The push might seem less surprising in a counterculture bastion like Berkeley, Calif., or Madison, Wis., or even an ecologically focused city like St. Paul. But Reynolds is in a conservative patch of a largely conservative state, a place where many cars are actually pickups and the word "environmentalist" can draw a groan.

Still, frustration, driven in part by the price of gas at the only station in town, has boiled over and rendered ideological labels meaningless.

King Van Voorst, 85, a longtime resident, blamed Arab nations for the recent spike in gasoline prices. "We have got to get some kind of energy going over here to show we can do it ourselves," Mr. Van Voorst said. "And why can't we? They need to know that we can do it, and that we don't need them."

The State of Indiana first brought the idea to Reynolds last year, dubbing it BioTown, in an experiment Gov. Mitch Daniels acknowledges could be viewed as a bit of "a stunt." But in the months that followed and as the price of gasoline soared, Reynolds adopted the notion as its own, and residents began speaking passionately of an end to their reliance on foreign oil and of the potential electricity they could envision in the more than 150,000 pigs that wander nearby.

Since November, nearly 100 of the community's residents have begun driving cars that can run on ethanol-based fuel, as has the employee who drives one of the town's three vehicles. The other two town cars have been replaced with diesel vehicles, so they can run on bio-diesel fuel like vegetable oil. And this month, officials here began work on a plant that would allow Reynolds to draw its electricity from pig and cow manure, as well as human waste.

Full text here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/us/04biotown.html?ei=5094&en=5ebecc6fef699704&hp=&ex=1149393600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print