protein mash and feed it to their cows and chickens, and they get 

 something like... when they are running the still .. .something like 70 

 gallons an hour of 160 proof alcohol. And, they have converted all of 

 their tractors to run on the alcohol that they produce. Doesn't use any 

 gasoline at all and they sell the rest. Their product is estimated to be 

 worth about $12,000, which is fairly good considering in the first year 

 they only made a $16,000 investment. That is a really respectable return. 

 A little closer to home is a passive solar greenhouse--the largest one in 

 the country that was built in the community of Cheyenne, Wyoming. 

 They have used half of this solar greenhouse to produce food for the 

 community for the hot lunch program--senior citizens and so forth--and 

 they use the other half for commerical plants, house plants, tree seedlings 

 and so forth. In the first 12 months of use of this greenhouse, they used 

 no supplemental heat at all. And I can vouch for that because we have a 

 small experimental greenhouse out at our center in Butte. Butte typically 

 reaches 30 degrees below zero at least twice a winter and we have not 

 turned on supplemental heat once. It's just heated by big drums of water 

 and its been growing vegetation all winter on those big drums of water. 

 In the greenhouse in Cheyenne, Wyoming their only bill in the first year 

 was $50 in utility bills to pay for the light and to pay for pumping the 

 water to water the plants. Their first year profits, considering they hd 

 voluntary labor and so forth, is six times their $400 investment to 

 construct it. I think that that is really exciting. It has had a lot of 

 other really nice side benefits, too. In addition, they have workers there 

 age from ten to 92 who just like going down there and socializing and 

 working on the community greenhouse. There are a lot of other really 

 interesting examples and I don't need to dwell on them. There's a dairy 

 farm in Wisconsin which collects manure in a sealed culvert and directs the 

 gas to a little chamber they have created over a pond with plastic sheets 

 and at a certain point they are able to purify the gas and to store it and 

 they use it to run their cogenerator which supplies electricity and heat to 

 the house and heat to the barn. So there are these interesting things 

 that are going on, so I just want to end on that note. 



And that is that it's a very interesting thing to me that there are a 

 lot of people out there who are really pursuing new ideas and they're 

 innovators, I would have to say, in spite of very little government interest 

 or government support. But there's a very important thing at the end of 

 this discussion and that is that the future of technology in this country, 

 it does hold a choice for the West. And it holds a challenge to get a 

 firmer and a more innovative hand on the kinds of technology that we are 

 going to use and I strongly feel that if we fail, then the future of the 

 West may be a very tragic repetition of what we've sc.'2n in its past. 

 Thank you. 



