The winner of the Jackson County Green Energy Park 2010 Sculpture Competition is Box of Souls, a contemporary sculpture by artist Bob Doster of Lancaster, S.C.

Selected by an independent jury panel, Doster’s piece is a constructed stainless steel box, cut away to reveal empty space in the shape of numerous geometric and representational figures including the sun and stars, humans and animals.

A winner of the 2007 Southern Arts Federation Award, Doster has had his sculptures displayed throughout the Southeastern United States and around the world. He is an internationally acclaimed sculptor whose unique style of metal art ranges from accent pieces with a whimsical feel to large-scale installed sculptures.

Doster’s commitment to engaging and educating youth was formally recognized in 2006, when he received the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner award for outstanding achievement and contributions to the arts. This award is the highest honor South Carolina bestows on artists.

Box of Souls will be on display at the Green Energy Park through July 2011. Visitors may view the piece year-round during regular park hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. www.jcgep.org.

The Jackson County Green Energy Park took center stage last week as Governor Bev Perdue and the Appalachian Regional Commission dropped in for a tour, touting the initiative as a model of the new green economy.

Perdue spent about an hour watching artisan demonstrations, and visiting with state and local leaders at the park, which uses landfill methane gas to power a blacksmith’s shop and a glass-blowing studio. She even left with an armful of Christmas presents, having purchased hand-blown vases and cheese spreaders forged in the blacksmith’s shop.

For the park’s director Timm Muth, the tour was an opportunity to emphasize the human side of green science.

“What I wanted them to take away even more than just the fact that we use landfill gas is that the park is an example of people thinking outside the box to meet the energy needs and the economic needs of our local community,” Muth said.

The Jackson County Green Energy Park has received $100,000 in grants from the ARC since 2007, and it’s rapidly becoming a showcase as a creative use for small-scale methane gas, a byproduct of decomposing trash.

In the past year, Muth has hosted visitors from Ukraine, Mexico, India and China who have come to see how the landfill methane can drive the furnaces that power the park’s glass blowing and blacksmith shops.

“It helps provide a buzz so people can get interested in green energy,” Muth said. “When they’re standing 10 feet from one of these glory holes and they feel the heat or see a blacksmith melting steel, they see how it works.”

Local blacksmith John Burtner has rented shop space at the park for the past two years. Burtner uses a modified methane furnace to heat his metal at temperatures higher than 2,000 degrees. He says his energy source is part of the marketing appeal of his final product.

“As far as I know, I’m the only blacksmith that uses landfill gas to forge,” Burtner said. “I make sure when I show in a gallery to let people know it’s a green energy product, and it’s a huge selling point.”

The green energy park is also an example of how county government can attract state money by taking a risk. Methane levels in the county’s landfill were dangerously high. It would cost $400,000 to simply remediate the problem. Instead the county put that money toward a more ambitious project.

“We were going to have to spend money one way or another, and I’d been studying methane uses for some time,” said County Manager Ken Westmoreland. “The technology had changed to open up the possibility for small landfills.”

Jackson County followed in the footsteps of a similar project at a landfill near Burnsville, another small mountain town.

Since its opening, the park has landed more than $600,000 in state and federal grants, including $140,000 from the State Energy Office and $120,000 from the N.C. Rural Center.

When the park first began tapping its methane reservoirs, Muth estimated there was a 25-year supply of gas. Westmoreland said last week there’s enough methane now to tap 10 more wells. The county is currently in the process of adding a pottery studio at the complex that will require more energy to heat the kilns.

N.C. Rep. Phil Haire, D-Sylva, said the park showed how the region is working to implement Perdue’s push towards a renewable energy economy using local, state and federal dollars.

“In effect, we’re recycling,” Haire said.  “You couldn’t do anything with methane for years, and we started this project five years ago and now it’s creating jobs. It’s the first step towards a renewable economy.”

For County Chairman Brian McMahan, the tour was a gratifying chance to see the reward for making an environmentally sound decision.

“We had a vision when we were told by the state that we had methane levels we needed to deal with,” McMahan said. “We could have flared it off and put it into the environment, but we put our heads together and this is what we came up with.”

The Jackson County Green Energy Park recently opened the first landfill methane-fueled art foundry in the world.

“Because of the increasing costs of fossil fuels, as well as the environmental impact of the fire arts in general, demonstrating that landfill gas can work in a foundry situation opens up new opportunities for the preservation of these art forms,” said Tracy Kirchmann, a Western Carolina University graduate student and assistant to JCGEP.

Kirchmann was a recent recipient of an honorable mention in the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement Award.

The foundry was built to increase the versatility of the metals shop for incoming artist residents. The JCGEP metals shop has two studio spaces available for one to three-year residencies, and is also available for four-week residencies and internships year round. Resident artists share access to the 2,500-square-foot shop, which includes metal fabrication equipment, blacksmithing forges and the foundry.

As the JCGEP program develops, additional works will be shown onsite through an annual sculpture competition. This year’s selected piece, “Metamorphosis,” is a sculpture made of cor-ten steel by Waynesville artist Grace Cathey.

To date, JCGEP also has completed construction on a metals shop featuring a series of greenhouses, three blacksmithing forges, and a glassblowing studio that is slated to open this fall. The major appliances in each of these facilities utilize the landfill gas as their fuel source.

For more information, or to organize a tour of the JCGEP, call 828.631.0271.

By Timm Muth

My thanks to the editor for giving me the opportunity to respond to the recent allegations about safety at the Green Energy Park. The article in last week’s paper (“Issues flare up at Green Energy Park,” Feb. 27 SMN) contained a number of inaccuracies about our gas piping system in particular. I’ll try here to set the record straight.

The Driscoplex 4100 HDPE (high density polyethylene) piping that we use is the industry standard for use in landfill gas systems. According to Kim Witterman with Lee Supply Company (the East Coast distributor for such piping), “most major landfills on the East Coast use this pipe for gas distribution.” Our pipe was specified and installed by one of the most experienced landfill gas installers in the country, McGee Environmental, which has installed the same pipe at landfills throughout North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida.

There are two types of pipe that we could have used for gas distribution: HDPE or stainless steel. Since HDPE pipe connections are thermo-welded together, they all but eliminate the chance of an accidental gas leak. Stainless steel piping, in our application, would have required dozens of fittings and connectors, each connection a potential leak site. The HDPE pipe is rated to withstand a pressure of 150 psi, and our piping arrangement was pressure-tested after installation to 100 psi to check for leaks, even though our gas system actually operates at only 1/2 psi.

Our piping and gas collection system is inspected and monitored monthly by McGee Environmental, while our gas and water sample wells are monitored quarterly by Altamont Environmental. Our blacksmith forges (where we currently burn the landfill gas) are equipped with two separate safety systems to shut off gas flow in case of an emergency. We’ve also installed protective ballard posts (large, concrete-filled pipes) around each pipe or condensate trap that rises above ground to prevent any accidental damage by vehicles or equipment.

I recognize that to laymen, with little or no industry experience, some aspects of our construction may seem odd. Pipe supports must be designed and installed in a way that allow for expansion and contraction of the pipe as the outside temperature changes. Gas pipe is black in color due to the addition of carbon black to its makeup, which protects against damage from the sun’s UV rays. And the thermo-welded joints on our pipes are actually stronger than the original pipe walls and twice as thick. Based on our research, and on the products used at other landfill gas projects across the country, we stand behind our statement that the piping system we’ve used is safe and in compliance with industry standards. Above all else, the safety of our tenants, employees, and members of the public is, and will always be, our chief concern.

To be honest, the insinuation that the gas pipe that runs beneath the access road to the staffed recycling center presents a danger to the public is, quite simply, ridiculous. This is no “time bomb,” as stated in last week’s article. The pipe was installed under a plan approved by the DOT, which meets all applicable DOT and DENR regulations. The pipe is buried roughly five feet underground and placed inside an engineered culvert pipe where it travels beneath the roadway. This situation is no different than the thousands of feet of natural gas pipe buried beneath the streets of Sylva and Dillsboro. No one worries about those pipes on a daily basis, nor should they worry about our pipes.

Landfill reduces toxin releases

I also need to address the comment concerning “the amount of toxic pollution it (the Green Energy Park) produces.” The GEP does not produce toxic pollution; in fact, we prevent 222 tons of methane gas from entering the atmosphere each year. This reduction in pollution provides roughly the same amount of environmental benefits as removing 916 cars off the road or planting 1,300 acres of forests each year. As I mentioned in a previous article, landfills are dirty places, no argument; but our sample testing shows no contamination to groundwater sources, and even samples taken from the body of the landfill fall well below DENR regulatory limits.

In case anyone is wondering, my career in the energy industry began in 1980, working in nuclear power plant construction. Since then, I’ve earned an engineering degree from Virginia Tech and have worked with nuclear plant operations, coal-fired plants, large and small-scale hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, fuel cells, and solar installations. I’ve spent countless hours as an engineer, project manager, and technical writer in paper mills, battery factories, textile mills, printed circuit board plants, tobacco and food-processing facilities. I have also worked for both the N.C State Energy Office and the N.C. Solar Center, overseeing a variety of landfill gas projects and other renewable energy initiatives around the state. And yes, for a few years I enjoyed being a professional, dirt-encrusted mountain biker, leading bike tours through these beautiful mountains of ours, and writing books and magazine articles on the subject.

The Green Energy Park is a county-funded effort, and as such the taxpayers have a vested interest in the outcome of the project. I reluctantly mentioned my background above so that the folks in my community will know a little more about my qualifications and experience level. I took this job because I was honored that County Manager Ken Westmoreland and the county commissioners would entrust me with such an exciting and important project as the Jackson County Green Energy Park. I felt that this project offered me a chance to make something really happen in Jackson County, and to give something valuable and enduring back to my newly-adopted home. I believe in this project because it’s the right thing to do for our community, for our children, and for our environment: to turn trash into treasure, and change a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

So please stay tuned, as we’ve got some exciting things in store. We’ll build a community project that everyone in Jackson County can be proud of, where the public can enjoy watching and learning from artists as they practice their crafts. We’ll help teach kids why a clean environment is so important to all of us. We’ll continue to build bridges between the students and faculty at WCU, and our local community. And we’ll give artists and other entrepreneurs the opportunity to work hard and make their own dreams a reality. Please come and visit us, see what we’re doing, ask all the questions you want, and give us your suggestions. Because this project belongs to you, the people of Jackson County, and we want all of you to come be a part of it.

(Timm Muth can be reached This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

By Jennifer Garlesky • Staff Writer

Jackson County officials say its high-profile tenant at the Green Energy Park is in violation of its lease, and now the county is requiring the biodiesel producer to comply or move elsewhere.

By Jennifer Garlesky • Staff Writer

Viewers across the state will have the opportunity to learn about Jackson County’s green energy production from their living room.

When Greg Kidd saw his odometer hit 250,000 miles last spring, he knew he would reluctantly be catapulted into the market for a new car sooner rather than later.

By Anna Fariello • Guest Writer

William Rogers has been a professional metalsmith for more than 25 years, but nothing could have prepared him for the work he is doing at the Jackson County Green Energy Park.

Jackson County’s Green Energy Park has received the Environmental Protection Agency’s Project of the Year award, giving the one-of-a-kind methane gas recovery project some much deserved recognition.

By Michael Beadle

At first it sounds too good to be true.

Imagine being able to pipe methane gas from a landfill to heat greenhouses, run a biodiesel refinery, and power blacksmithing forges and art studios for glassblowers and potters.