In 1875, so the story goes, an Illinois newspaper editor concocted a tale about a cat and rat ranch that was seeking investors. Cats and rats are prolific, and cat skins were supposedly valuable. The ranch got them for nothing, however, because it fed the rats to the cats and the cats, minus their skins, to the rats. The venture reputedly made a profit of $10,000 per day. The tall tale was reportedly sent out by the wire services and accepted as real for years.

Sanco Energy, the father-son startup company that was the subject of a story by the Monitor's Meg Heckman in last Monday's paper, plans to open a "closed loop" venture in Barnstead that's reminiscent of the cat and rat ranch. But this one's legit.

The company, Sanco, will add jobs and aid Barnstead's struggling economy. It will produce clean electricity, heat, wood pellets for fuel, fish, vegetables and eventually ethanol from non-food crops. Its plant, described on its website at sancoenergy.com, works roughly like this:

Truckloads of chips from low-grade wood will fuel a state-of-the-art boiler and turbine system that will eventually produce 20 megawatts of power and lots of surplus heat. The heat, in the form of steam, will be used to make wood pellets for sale and to heat water in million-gallon tanks to 85 degrees.

In the tanks would be tilapia, a mild-flavored, white-fleshed fish now primarily imported from China. It is the fifth best-selling fish in the nation. In the vast greenhouse, alongside the tanks, and in trays floating atop them, Sanco plans to raise tomatoes and other crops hydroponically. The plants will be fed the waste produced by the fish, which in turn will clean the water for re-use. The crops will be sold.

The cat and rat ranch parallel breaks down, however. The fish will not be raised on tomatoes, and their waste will provide only part of the nutrients needed by the plants. Still, the system will operate efficiently enough that no wastewater treatment will be necessary, and the company's principals, Greg and Erik True, plan to sell the ash left over from burning wood as fertilizer.

The True family has been in the forest products business for generations, and Greg True grew up with its Yankee "use everything on a pig but the squeal" ethic. Sanco puts that ethic in practice on a grand scale, one that he believes will create 50 to 100 jobs on the 135-acre site plus up to another 150 outside in the logging industry.

The Trues' vision is not pie in the sky. Others are exploring or building similar projects, and such cogeneration - using the heat and power from burning fuel for a variety of uses to maximize efficiency - is becoming an economic necessity. It is, in fact, exactly what Concord Steam hopes to do, minus the fish, etc., when it moves to the old railroad yards in the city's South End.

What Sanco is attempting is great news for Barnstead and the area's forest economy. It's a sign of the kind of changes all nations must make to combat global warming, become more energy independent and prevent the elimination of the world's stock of wild fish. When the line forms for tomatoes, we'll be in it.