Why didn't we think of this?

Well I never thought I'd be reporting an alternative energy innovation in the old hometown of Flint, Michigan, but here we go.

The city and a Swedish company plan to turn the city's human waste stream into fuel for powering vehicles or generating electricity.

In the process, they say the partnership -- expected to be spelled out in further detail today at a City Hall news conference -- could make Flint a national leader in the biogas industry.

The news comes as other fuel costs soar and worries over fossil fuels linger.

"It's not that Swedes are smarter ... but if you pay $7, $8, $9 a gallon for gas, you get very creative. ... Swedes have learned," said Lennart N. Johansson, consul general for the Consulate General of Sweden in Detroit ...

The project has the potential to expand to process biogas from other sources, including landfills, and to produce fertilizer as a moneymaking byproduct, (Doug Parks, vice president of new market development for the Michigan Economic Development Corp.) said ...

State officials said Sweden is recognized as a global leader in renewable fuels -- with biomass waste supplying more than 65 percent of the county's heating needs for buildings.

Flint, of course, is much larger than Newburyport. The population, according to a 1998 census, is about 131,000.

Wow, when I was a kid, it almost 200,000.

Link between Flint and Massachusetts: The eighth deadliest tornado on record in the United States struck Beecher, just north of Flint, on June 8, 1953, killing 115 people, injuring 844. Known as the "Beecher Tornado," after the North Side community, the tornado devastated the area. On the next day the same weather system spawned the worst tornado in New England in Worcester, Massachusetts, killing another 94 people. (Source: Wikipedia)