I recently visited the National Conservation Training Center near Shepherdstown, WV. My goal was to find an eastern site for our seminar series for federal judges. It is an excellent facility run by the Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Department of Interior. (Its creation and operation exemplify political entrepreneurship, but that’s another column.)

While there, I toured the independent, nonprofit Freshwater Institute, a research facility of the Conservation Fund. It’s Green social entrepreneurship in action.

Social entrepreneurs find innovative, creative ways to produce goods and services not adequately generated by market forces. They may work in the artistic, educational, environmental, or health and welfare fields. (A few, such as Gallatin Writers, might combine two, i.e., artistic and environmental.) Here’s how they operate.

Social entrepreneurs identify an unfulfilled opportunity to fix a problem or fill a void. Eagle Mount’s outdoor activities such as skiing, horseback riding, or fishing for seriously ill or handicapped people is a stellar example.

Next, a leader mobilizes human and capital resources to achieve this end. This is a difficult process requiring intelligence, ambition, determination, drive, and charisma. Very few have all attributes. It’s compellingly obvious and recurrently demonstrated that good intentions are insufficient.

Successful social entrepreneurship is even more difficult than the for-profit variety -- and 9 of 10 for-profits fail. As nonprofits, social entrepreneurs don’t have the financial potential to induce cooperation from colleagues or funds from investors. To succeed, they must convert idealism into services and products.

The Freshwater Institute conducts practical research on freshwater aquaculture. (See their excellent web site for details.) It exemplifies the positive potential of harmonizing applied aquatic ecology with sound economics.

I plan to include this facility in our federal judges’ seminars on biotechnology. It’s a remarkable research field station and, in terms of improving human and environmental welfare, perhaps one of the most important.

Aquaculture involves raising fish and crustaceans for food. Given the great increase in demand for animal protein, and the limits of natural systems to supply it, aquaculture is exploding. But alas, so are its negative impacts on natural systems.

Perhaps because they are cold-blooded and needn’t expend energy fighting gravity, fish are far more efficient converters of feed to flesh than are cows, hogs, or chickens. However, traditional fish farms generate massive pollution. Further, like steers in a feedlot or other animals in close confinement, farmed fish are medicated and drugs spill out. These are usually serious problems.

Fortunately, these problems are successfully addressed by Freshwater Institute researchers. They develop aquaculture techniques that are both environmentally sensitive and commercially viable. Also, their research fosters aquaculture that does not displace ecologically important areas such as mangrove swamps, e.g., raising shrimp in fresh water.

The Institute’s facilities are impressive. Imagine rooms the size of basketball courts. They are filled with enormous tanks and silos, air and water pumps, filters, and a huge collection of PCV pipes, valves, and fittings.

In the tanks are tens of thousands -- tons and tons -- of trout and grayling. They begin as fingerlings in small tanks and are moved to larger holdings as they mature. Ultimately, the ratio is one pound of fish for each gallon of water. These are crowded schools indeed -- but safe and healthy due to monitoring and filtration.

When the experiment is complete, the fish are harvested and final data gathered. The fish are commercially processed and given to charities, e.g., food banks and shelters. The waste is screened, processed, and converted to high-quality mulch and fertilizer.

Let’s end with a true fish story. The Freshwater Institute has the required governmental effluent permits. But such permits aren’t always meaningful. Bureaucrats can’t constantly monitor water quality. In contrast, rainbow trout do. Rainbows require cold, clean water. After the spring water goes through the Institute’s facility, recycled and cleaned many times, it is dumped into a small pond which is discharged into a creek.

Just before I arrived, lightning hit the pond and killed a lone trout that escaped while a fingerling. It became a 28-inch, 16-plus-pound rainbow that thrived in the Institute’s “waste” water. I find this is compelling testimony to the quality and value of these entrepreneurs.