Tell City.

• Author: Biever, Richard G.
• Position: Construction of sewer system spurs growth of city in Perry County, Indiana - Regional Report: Southwest

In the movie "Field of Dreams," a struggling farmer played by Kevin Costner hears a voice in his cornfield whispering, "If you build it, they will come."

Inspired by that voice, he plows under half of his crop and, in its place, builds a beautifully manicured baseball diamond there in the middle of nowhere and attracts an endless string of tourists.

Shortly after taking office in 1988, Tell City Mayor Bill Goffinet had a similar pipe dream. Only his did not involve a baseball diamond, but a real pipe--a sewer pipe--extending almost 20 miles into the middle of nowhere in northern Perry County. But Goffinet went ahead and built it. And hoped they would come. "Most people thought it was a stupid idea," Goffinet says. He admits even he started having doubts as the project unfolded. "But it's proven to be a great thing for us."

Tucked down between the toes of the state, the city Goffinet inherited six years ago was eroding. Though by far the center of Perry County's population (with 8,088 of the county's 19,107 people) Tell City, and the county as a whole, seemed mired in the remote Ohio River backwater. New jobs were slow in coming. Young folks who left for college never came back. Population projections for the county into the year 2020 looked bleak. But not any more.

Those projections, based on the decline from 1980 to 1990, assumed Tell City and the county would stand back and do nothing about the decline. "Without infrastructure," says Greg Wathen, executive director of the Perry County Development Corp., "there will be no future for Tell City. Those projections will come true. But there will be a future because we're going to do it."

Tell City completed Goffinet's ambitious sewer project in April 1992. Though not as romantic as a baseball diamond, the project has left things smelling like roses for the city and county. "The sewer line has really positioned us to grow," the mayor says.

"It's opened up thousands of acres to potential development that wasn't open before," says Mike Rampley, director of economic development at Hoosier Energy Rural Electric Cooperative Inc. The Bloomington-based generation and transmission cooperative supplies power to much of rural Perry County through Southern Indiana REC, the Tell City-based distribution co-op.

The city and the county development corporation work closely with the electric co-ops, Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Co. and other utilities that serve the areas to ensure competitive energy...