Looking Ahead by Cutting Back

Eleven competing towns get all charged up over saving energy

The sleepy little hamlet of Monterey, Mass., tucked away in the Berkshire Hills, seemed to have fallen into a time warp. As the 760 winter residents of the resort community went about their business, no radio or television could be heard. At Millie Walsh's Mobil station on Route 23 just past the center of town, the electric clock had stopped and the giant soft-drink cooler was turned off. At Arthur and Alice Somers' huge Victorian manse on the edge of nearby Lake Garfield, the cavernous, antiquated kitchen was bathed in the soft glow of kerosene lamps and candles. Alice Somers heated corn chowder on an 1887 Rollhaus wood stove, meanwhile keeping her eye on the mulled cider that simmered near by. In the barn behind his parents' 230-year-old colonial home, John Maycuk, 17, helped his Jersey cow give birth to a heifer by the light of a kerosene lantern.

If the good folks of Monterey seemed a little behind the times, it was because they were looking to the future. Along with the residents often other towns in the Northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada, they were trying to cut their energy usage as part of a three-day conservation competition. The effort was sponsored by the Northeast International Committee on Energy, founded in 1978 by the six New England Governors and the premiers of Canada's five eastern provinces. In addition to Monterey, the American communites were Middlebury, Vt; Ellsworth, Me.; Plymouth, N.H.; Mansfield, Conn.; and Burrillville, R.I. From the north came stiff competition--frozen stiff in some cases -- from Summerside, P.E.I.; Grand FallsWindsor, Nfld.; Bridgewater, N.S.; St. Stephen, N.B.; and Baie Comeau, Que.

In Summerside (pop. 10,200), an agricultural center on P.E.I.'s south shore, once noted for its schooners and wooden sailing ships, temperatures plunged below the freezing mark. The town normally pays the highest electricity bills in Canada because it taps diesel-fueled generators for most of its power. During the competition, however, the Summerside branch of the Royal Bank of Canada turned its thermostat down to a spartan 50DEG. Bundled in sweaters, the bank's employees toiled busily by the light of Coleman lanterns, kerosene lamps, candlesticks and even silver candelabra they had brought from home. Meanwhile, in the red brick town hall, city workers left electric typewriters and adding machines unplugged and addressed tax forms by hand.

In Middlebury (pop. 7,000), a calendar-picture college town nestled in the heart of Vermont's richest farm land, the old school spirit prevailed. Middlebury College students ate their evening meals by candlelight and the townsfolk gave away tickets for a regular Friday-night football game to those who had turned off their lamps and television sets. A community cookout followed the game--over wood fires, naturally. The elderly warmed their feet by keeping time to a fiddlers' contest.

Back in Monterey, residents mounted a parade that surpassed even the festivities for the town's 125th anniversary eight years ago. Included in the procession: the band and drum majorettes from Mount Everett Regional High School, the town's new fire engine and police cruiser and a float featuring a windmill, water wheel and solar panel.

Because the total energy use of most small towns can be easily measured, full participation by all the residents was virtually a necessity. Middlebury schools sponsored lectures and films on conservation. Ministers in their pulpits preached the benefits of being energy efficient. The 500 pupils of Summerside's Greenfield Elementary School filled every available inch of wall space with imaginative collages bearing such messages as CUT BACK, JACK and LESS WATER, DAUGHTER. Monterey Police Chief Douglas Lyman went so far as to get up every morning and drive to the hospital in nearby Great Barrington to shave and clean up. Said Lyman: "I haven't taken a bath or shaved at home since this whole thing started."

When the final kilowatts were tallied, there were three official winners in the competition, but no real losers. Middlebury's "Alternity" week (an abbreviation of alternative energy for eternity) was named as the best overall conservation effort. St. Stephen (pop. 6,000), a prosperous fishing and lumbering town near the U.S. border, sliced 17.5% off its electricity consumption, edging out Monterey's 15.6% drop, to take the overall energy reduction award. The small pulp and paper center of Grand Falls-Windsor (combined pop. 15,000) was dubbed the most creative for having a town crier stalk through the streets exhorting the townspeople to turn off unnecessary lights and appliances. Regardless of their meter readings, most participants were charged up with a new sense of civic unity after the contest. Said Millie Walsh of Monterey: "I felt we'd won before any of this, and I still do. We're still on a high, with or without first place."

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