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TwitThisWind rustled through the field in Spirit Lake, Iowa, where boys played flag football. As the school's superintendent, Harold Overmann, watched the boys, he wondered how he could harness all that wind power. Suddenly, he had the answer: Put up a windmill.
This was in 1991, and there wasn't a single large-scale wind turbine in the Midwest. But tiny Spirit Lake sits atop Buffalo Ridge, a 75-mile rise above the plains that wind-energy experts describe as the "Saudi Arabia" of wind power. Overmann and his facilities manager, Jim Tirevold, thought this made it a no-brainer.
It took two years of research -- and a $119,000 grant from the Department of Energy -- but, in July 1993, Overmann flipped the switch to a wind turbine on the elementary school lawn. The district added a second one in October 2001. Once that turbine is paid off in 2007, the schools expect to save $140,000 per year.
Overmann is pleased that the district is saving money. But he pushed for the windmills to reduce the use of fossil fuels -- which they have done by an estimated 3,400 barrels of oil per year. "We've just got to reduce our reliance on foreign oil," he says.
Water Works
Chad Pregracke was watching a NASCAR race on TV when he had his brainstorm. It was 1997, and Pregracke had always dreamed of cleaning up the portion of the Mississippi River near his home in East Moline, Illinois. He thought if companies would sponsor a race car, maybe they would sponsor a river cleanup.
One company agreed: Pregracke soon raised $8,400 from Alcoa, and set out in his own 20-foot flat-bottom aluminum boat. His friends thought he was nuts as he plied a 100-mile stretch of the Mississippi, fishing milk crates and blown-out tires from the river. "A lot of people say, 'Isn't the government supposed to do this?' But I always think, We are the government, and we should take it upon ourselves," Pregracke says.
Seven years later, Living Lands and Waters, the nonprofit group he founded in 1998, employs a full-time staff of ten. They organize 3,000 volunteers per year to clear garbage from the Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio rivers. Last April, he led 800 volunteers on a month-long cleanup of the Potomac.
To date, Living Lands and Waters has hauled two million pounds of trash from America's rivers, including more than 600 refrigerators, 40 bowling balls and one piano. In 2003, the group started planting trees too. Pregracke, who's now just 30, hopes that the over 20,000 trees they planted last year will lure more diverse wildlife to the banks of the Mississippi.
Oil-Free
Barbara Brown, Lacy Jones and Kate Klinkerman became best friends in 4-H. Like many youngsters in rural Victoria County, Texas, they raised cattle, horses and goats. Then one night in 1997, they decided to research motor-oil recycling for their next 4-H project.
Pouring used motor oil around fence posts and barns is a common practice there, because the toxic sludge kills weeds and fights off insects. But the girls wondered if this was such a good idea. "We noticed it would turn the land black," Jones says. So they did some research and spoke with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The girls learned that one gallon of motor oil can contaminate 250,000 gallons of groundwater, and "we live off the groundwater from our wells," Brown says.
The state gave them one 400-gallon yellow-and-black container, and the girls promoted a motor-oil recycling program called Don't Be Crude. Pretty soon, their collection tanks were dotting the back roads of Victoria County.
What began as a 4-H project became a full-fledged nonprofit group in 2000. Today, Don't Be Crude collects 50,000 gallons of used motor oil per year from seven counties along the Gulf Coast of Texas. Roads are paved with the used oil, and old oil filters are made into fence posts.
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