THE Camphill Community in Co Kilkenny, where self-sufficiency and care for the environment are the watchwords, is seeking to branch out with an adventurous alternative energy and waste-recycling project which could be a model for other communities.
The groundwork has already been done for a methane gas digester system which could provide combined heat and power for the community, with the possibility of feeding surplus energy into the national grid.
The community's network of houses and organic farms, where 130 people with disabilities and volunteers of many nationalities live as co-workers in a sustainable and harmonious rural environment, has already set a benchmark with its reedbed waste treatment system.
Much of the community's sewage waste is circulated through a series of ponds, where bullrushes and other aquatic plants break down the mineral and organic components by a natural process, finally discharging water that is non-polluting and almost 100 per cent pure.
There is no smell from the reedbed ponds, which are aesthetically pleasing and very much part of the natural environment. The technique has evolved and been developed following extensive research carried out in Germany and elsewhere on the ability of various plants to metabolise heavy metals.
The system is working well in Camphill and has prompted an examination by Kilkenny County Council of how it might be applied as an alternative to conventional" waste-treatment systems for towns and villages.
The project, according to Camphill's Mr Patrick Lydon, is a natural extension of their environmental determination.
It will involve co-operation between the community and three neighbouring farmers, who are making available the slurry from their cattle herds.
Camphill would supply a team of people with disabilities to transport the slurry to two concrete digester" tanks. In these heated tanks it would break down naturally, producing methane gas which would be collected and used to generate heat and power. Part of the power produced would be fed back to keep the system going.
The slurry would separate naturally into a liquid suitable for use as a fertiliser - and be returned to the farmers and solids which would constitute a rich organic compost.
Mr Patrick's co-worker, Mr Christoph Eusterbrock, from Germany, explained the theoretical output of the system would be 90 installed KW. About 250 tonnes of contaminated butter fat would be available from the big Kilkenny co-op, Avonmore, to augment the slurry which would feed the process.
Altogether some 6,000 tonnes of slurry and industrial waste would be consumed and processed a year, producing about 1,200 cubic metres of useful compost for sale.
Grants towards the capital cost would be available from the European firm waste pilot scheme, the Department of Agriculture and other sources. But the key to the project, Mr Patrick Lydon explained, would be the ability to sell surplus power to the ESB.
In other European countries, - where the energy market is open, enterprises which both consume and produce energy can avail of a system of "net billing". In other words, there is a standard price and direct access to both buy and sell energy, whether there is a surplus or a deficit.