Green Energy Powers the Arts

Tucked away in the mountainous woods of beautiful Jackson County, North Carolina, sits an old landfill, a burial ground for bottles, cartons and phonebooks. 

As these remnants of days gone by age and rot, toxic methane gas released from the mound threatens the natural surroundings. Yet, what could have been a case of environmental injustice turned into a story of art, altruism and sustainability when former nuclear engineer Timm Muth teamed with a county manager to create the one-of-a-kind Jackson County Green Energy Park. 

The Dance of Art and Science

In 2005, county leaders realized the small landfill could be a problem and that a gas collection system was needed. “That’s the funny thing about gas,” said Muth. “It migrates and can be sneaky stuff. If you’re not careful, it can easily show up in someone’s basement or water.” 

When Muth assessed the landfill 12 years ago, he learned it generated 40-50 cubic feet of gas per minute. He told the county manager the gas could be used innovatively, despite the fact outside consultants said the amount of gas wasn’t enough to worry about. Muth and his team decided otherwise and forged ahead with a plan of their own. 

Now, methane gas is sucked out of the ground, pushed down the hill to the artists’ workshops and burned to fuel creative equipment. Touring the grounds, a visitor can spend one moment studying the contraption that extracts methane and the next watching a blacksmith weld a medieval shield or chatting with a group of potters around a kiln as their wares fire. 

It is a place where science and art dance together. 

The Green Energy Park houses metals, glass blowing and ceramic workshops. Artists of all demographics utilize the forges and fires fueled by methane gas. Stunning artistic creations emerge and are housed in galleries all over the world, including the art gallery at the Green Energy Park itself. 

For young artists, the park hosts an annual Youth Arts Festival where over 800 children and adolescents spend the day throwing pots, drawing, creating bugs with recycled materials and more. Muth believes in experiential education for students and only allows festival artists who will provide demonstrations. Most even offer hands-on activities for participants.  

“When a kid is throwing a pot on a wheel, he doesn’t realize he’s learning about strength of materials and other principles like conservation of rotational momentum,” said Muth. “When students visit the park, they may not learn about physics in the same terms they would in a classroom, but they’re learning it all the same. It’s just disguised as fun.”

A Global Model

It’s easy for people to go about their daily lives and never ponder the headache of a landfill. Common sense tells a person once a landfill is full, it must be expanded or closed, but both are easier said than done. Many landfills around the world sit: sedentary, smoldering time bombs of toxicity. 

Larger landfills are funded to convert their gases into electricity, but small landfills do not receive this luxury, nor do they accumulate enough methane to convert into large-scale electricity. Further, most small landfills are located in impoverished rural counties. In fact, there are no strict regulations for small landfills to do anything with their methane, so many merely burn it off. 

People ask Muth what the park is ‘worth’ and his reply is, “What’s it worth not to have a river that’s polluted? What’s it worth to offer experiential learning to hundreds of students per year? Or to provide workshops for area artists so they can sell their work in galleries? Those results have no number value, but they absolutely drive education and local economy.” 

At the Green Energy Park, there are monitoring wells around the perimeter of the property. Each time the park sponsored a workshop, Muth would see precipitous drops in gas. During the early days, one sample probe showed 85 percent methane and now all of them show zero percent methane. Other contaminants have dropped as well. 

“No one is going to make millions of dollars off a project like ours, but you can do something really great for your community. It’s important for folks to think outside the box and refrain from focusing solely on the money-making potential,” Muth said. 

Yearly, groups from around the globe visit Jackson County Green Energy Park to learn and hopefully take the knowledge back to their own small landfills. Daily, Muth and his staff prove that methane gas does not have to go to waste and pollute the environment. It can be used for so much good, he said. 

Many counties do not wish to allocate funding toward a project like the Green Energy Park. Others may have the desire but do not have a Timm Muth on staff to guide the endeavor. 

Muth is trying to change the entire conversation about trash. He says people shouldn’t view trash as something to throw in a hole in the ground. “If it’s food scraps or wood pallets or pine bark or pig poop, there are always ways to get organic energy back out in the world. You just have to be willing.”