For him, millstream generates cash flow.

• Position: Steve Cook's conversion of mills into hydroelectric plants

Back in 1980, Steve Cook was minding his own business -- two Greensboro-area auto-parts stores -- when he came across the story that made him power crazy.

After seeing an article in Eastern Airlines' in-flight magazine about converting old mills to hydroelectric plants, "something just clicked in my mind," the Greensboro native says. "I've made hydro my life."

In the past 12 years, Cook Industries Inc., whose only permanent employee is Cook, has set up five small-scale generating plants. A 1978 federal law requires utilities to buy surplus power from licensed generators. Since enactment of the law, which was intended to stave off electrical-power shortages while reducing the nation's reliance on imported oil, more than 30 independent hydroelectric plants have come on line in the state.

Cook's first plant was Coltrane Mill, just across the Deep River from his house in Greensboro. He leased the circa 1900 gristmill, idle for 40 years, and within five months had it up and running. But instead of producing cornmeal, the river turned a turbine hooked to a generator that put out 60 kilowatts an hour, which a line carried to a Duke Power substation. Two years later, Cook sold his interest in the plant to the building's owner. "I was interested in doing bigger plants," Cook says.

His next venture, in 1981, was an abandoned turn-of-the-century cotton mill near Coleridge, southeast of Asheboro on the Deep River. Using three motors Cook scavenged from old textile mills and converted to generators, the High Falls plant sells 650 kilowatts an hour to Carolina Power & Light.

Cook declines to reveal his total revenue, but says he can bring in about $100,000 a year from a 400- to 500-kilowatt plant...