Foes: plan to burn fowl fecal fuel stinks.

• Position: Eastern - Fibrowatt LLC

Poop power seemed like a godsend--possibly the perfect way to prevent the kind of mess Hurricane Floyd made 10 years ago when it flooded lagoons filled with fetid pig waste. Lawmakers had that in mind two years ago when they set quotas for utilities to buy power generated through alternative sources. Not long after that, Langhorne, Pa.-based Fibrowatt LLC announced it would build a plant in Sampson County that would burn chicken litter to make electricity. "We'd hoped people would recognize the tremendous benefits," spokesman Terry Walmsley says. "This is for poultry waste, not swine, but the principle is the same."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Opponents, though, are raising a stink. Citizens for a Safe Environment, founded in neighboring Duplin County nine years ago to fight a regional landfill, is lobbying legislators to effectively ban the plant. It says a Fibrowatt operation in Benson, Minn., emits harmful amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and other pollutants. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People complains that the company would operate in a part of Sampson County populated mostly by blacks, off Interstate 40 near Faison, and would send a steady stream of waste trucks past homes.

Fibrowatt remains unruffled and still hopes to...