Rural Idaho: Behind the green curve or ahead? 

Years ago, when a city slicker clad in a three-piece suit strolled into a Challis board room, members of the Salmon River Electric Cooperative board were far from impressed. The visitor was there to talk “green” with the rural group.

“So what do you think happened there?” said Ken Baker, owner of K energy, who attended the meeting as a consultant. “There was no respect either way between the board members that wore plaid shirts and the city slicker. I didn’t believe it. Why would you even think about wearing this out here?”
He said the disconnect was not all about clothes; the pomposity of the speaker’s attire carried over into the way he spoke. Baker said it happens all too often when energy efficiency companies or consultants approach rural areas – they try to impress their audiences more than they try to connect on a common level. And so while rural communities are receptive on many levels to the green movement – in fact, some say their commitment to green is intrinsic and more real than the soaring popularity of Priuses and organic products in urban areas – that feeling sometimes gets lost in their resistance to the new-age-sounding terms.
Joe Montesano, president of Greeneck Earthworks and vice president of Wilkinson-Montesano Builders, builds green among rural folks every day. He said greenecks, or rednecks gone green, have as much stake in preserving natural resources as everyone else does, if not more. They just think about it differently.
“You have to separate green building from ‘let this hippie build,’” he said. “There’s a stigma to green building that it’s just a bunch of environmentalists running around, dancing naked in the park, but it’s just a bunch of people like ourselves trying to be responsible and trying to be environmentally friendly. I think as soon as you say ‘green built’ or ‘environmentally friendly,’ people say it’s just a gimmick; you have to say ‘responsibly built’ or ‘efficiently built.’”
And people in rural Idaho relate to the need to build efficiently. Burley city administrator Mark Mitton said community members are just as aware of the rising energy costs as everyone else, and they want to conserve as much as they can.
“People in small communities are still dollars-and-cents motivated, especially because in rural areas you typically have not as high wages,” he said. “Economic decisions still lead the way they think.”
But the dollars-and-cents mentality can also mean a reluctance to make investments that take a long time to pay off, like fuel-efficient vehicles. And Mitton said cost comes into play with recycling decisions as well. He said with the great distances between houses and Burley’s geographic removal from recycling centers, recycling becomes difficult. The city has collection bins in public places for paper, cardboard and aluminum, but the fuel and manpower it would cost to sponsor curbside collection make an expanded recycling program too expensive in the city of 9,300 (at the 2000 census).
Despite these and other limitations, rural towns have long been centered on values of stewardship and self-sufficiency, with family gardens and backyard livestock filling in for the food shipping and distribution network of suburbia and the city.
Over the last few years, endless stories (like this one) about “going green” have plopped themselves down front and center before the public eye – green is the trendy thing to talk about and the trendy way to be. Rural communities tend to follow behind trends a bit because of their isolation, so it would make sense if towns in rural Idaho were slow to catch on to the green movement. But for people who have lived with their feet planted firmly in the earth for generations, taking care of the planet is not about following trends.
“The average rural Idahoan is responsible for what they have and cares for what they have, and that’s green,” said Lisa Clapier, farmer’s daughter and marketing director for Boise’s Green Foundations Building Center. “It’s being a responsible steward, not just jumping on a popular idea. It’s very chic right now to be green, but farmers have always been green. … They already know what the chic population is figuring out.”
Architect Bruce Millard of Sandpoint’s Studio of Sustainable Design said his work with rural people has shown him their understanding of the need for sustainable living runs deep.
“What we’ve been doing is deep-rooted in the health of our children and the health of the planet, and if you understand that, there is nothing but green; there is nothing but sustainability,” he said.
This understanding can apply to anyone of any party, he said, whether they’re an Al Gore fan or not.
“All this has nothing to do with politics,” he said. “Once people get outside of labeling or looking at people different because they voted for Bush or not and understand the core value of a community and using the least amount of energy possible and not using things that are chemical and toxic – what’s that have to do with being conservative or liberal?”

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