And then the exhaust began. A few residents rose up and the federal government Have Forgotten places struggling to replace the jobs and tax base the coal industry once provided.
“We get overlooked all the time,” said LuAnn Zack, deputy director of the Indiana County Planning and Development Agency.
“Nothing has been done to help energy workers,” said Aric Baker, president of International Electrical Workers Local 459, which represented about 120 now-laid-off workers at the Homer City power plant.
President Biden has repeatedly promised a “just transition” from fossil fuels to clean energy for communities that have lost good-paying jobs to shuttered coal mines and coal-fired power plants, and Indiana County, a deep red county in a battleground state crucial in the 2024 election, is one of the biggest tests of that pledge.
To win in Pennsylvania, Biden will need to convince voters in places like this one that they won’t be left behind as the nation transitions to cleaner energy sources than coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. But many of those residents The former president called for tougher environmental regulations in the hope that if he were to return to the White House, he might be able to revive the Homer City power plant.
Biden has sought to combine ambitious climate change policies that could accelerate the closure of coal-fired power plants with economic support for coal-based communities. Shortly after taking office, he established the Interagency Task Force on Coal-Fired Power Community and Economic Revitalization to help coal-based communities access federal funding. His signature climate change legislation would provide large subsidies for clean energy investments in these communities.
The Homer City plant had been struggling to compete economically with cheaper natural gas and renewable energy even before Biden imposed tough new limits on power plant pollution, but some local residents are confident Trump can revive the plant.
“When he comes back, this coal plant will be up and running again,” said Tom Roeser, 72, who worked at the plant for about 40 years before retiring in 2014.
In recent meetings, members of Biden’s interagency task force offered to help residents apply for federal aid. But Brian Anderson, the task force’s executive director, said in an interview that he understood why some Pennsylvanians were frustrated with the federal government. He said many people in West Virginia, whose grandfathers were coal miners, felt the same way.
“I come from a mining family and the energy industry, and the reality is that people feel left behind. They feel forgotten,” Anderson said. “They feel like, ‘They closed the mines and you forgot about us.'”
Anderson acknowledged that “we’re not going to have great success in halting job losses in every place where a mine or power plant closes,” but added that “we’re doing everything we can to make sure the private sector invests there and that the federal government doesn’t turn its back on these places.”
White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said in a phone interview that areas that once housed fossil fuel infrastructure are receiving a disproportionate share of investment in new clean energy projects spurred by Biden’s climate change law.
“From the campaign, through the transition and to his first day in office, the president has made it a priority to support the communities that supported us,” Zaidi said.
The delicate politics of coal
Like much of the nation’s coal-mining regions, Indiana County has shifted to the right in recent decades.
The area was once a Democratic stronghold, with local union workers voting reliably Democratic, but after the mines closed and union workers found other jobs, the area began to lean Republican, leading to the election of Republican Rep. Guy Reschenthaler in 2018.
The International Electrical Workers Union has endorsed Biden for reelection in April 2023, but some members of its local chapter blame the administration’s environmental regulations for the closure of the Homer City power plant. The United Mineworkers of America, which represents about 8,000 U.S. coal miners, has not endorsed a presidential candidate since Barack Obama ran for president. In 2008.
“Our union didn’t support either candidate because we didn’t believe there was anyone who could protect the jobs of our members,” said Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mineworkers of America. “People talk about a just transition, but there can’t be a transition when parts of the economy are collapsing and thousands of people are losing their jobs in the coal industry.”
Phil Smith, chief of staff for the United Mine Workers union, said the Biden administration is helping the union negotiate with companies that extract critical minerals from coal waste in southwestern Pennsylvania, potentially creating jobs for out-of-work miners. But he said the term “just transition” is just “a nice PR phrase.”
In 2016, Trump won 66.1% of the vote in Indiana counties but 48.8% statewide. His strong showing came after Democratic rival Hillary Clinton said in a town hall that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” (Clinton later apologized, saying the remarks were taken “totally out of context,” and supported spending $30 billion in economic bailouts for the coal industry.)
Despite Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania in 2020, Trump won 68.2 percent of the vote in the county, and today the grounds are filled with Trump flags and signs.
Although Trump has focused more in recent months on courting oil and gas donors than coal executives, he has mentioned coal as frequently this election cycle as he did in the last, according to a Washington Post analysis.
The analysis found that Trump mentioned coal nine times on his platform, Truth Social, during this election, compared with eight times on platform X during the 2016 election. The Journal’s research also found that Trump mentioned coal 25 times in 16 rallies during this election, many of which highlighted the expansion of coal-fired power plants in China and slammed wind energy.
“Coal runs power plants,” Trump said in April at a rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania. “China is building a big coal-fired power plant every week right now. While we’re struggling with wind power, China is running a coal-fired power plant every week.”
“With President Trump back in the White House, forgotten Pennsylvanians will not be forgotten,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in an email. “President Trump will unleash America’s energy sources – coal, oil and gas – to make our nation more self-sufficient, make life affordable for families, and keep the world safe.”
Despite these promises, the United States continues to move away from coal, including under the Trump administration. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. coal production fell 26% from 2017 to 2023. The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign claims that 382 coal-fired power plants have been proposed for closure or retirement, with 148 remaining.
Harvey McCann-Arty, 79, a former Homer City power plant employee, said Trump has done all he can to stop coal’s decline. “The idea is great,” he said. “I don’t know how much more he can do.”
But Greg Fletcher, 68, a former maintenance worker at a local coal-fired power plant, said he planned to vote for Biden because Trump had not lived up to his expectations.
“During the Trump administration, [environmental] “The standards were met, but the coal plants remained closed. It was all lip service,” Fletcher said in an interview on the front porch of his shuttered Homer City home. In the distance you can see the huge chimneys of a factory.
As for Biden, he said, “When it comes to this industry, I don’t think he’s done the industry any favors.”
Redevelopment of a mining town
The Homer City Generating Station’s smokestack, the tallest in the United States at over 1,200 feet, has towered over the town since 1969. But over the plant’s final years, steam began belching less and less frequently.
The plant’s operating rate was just 17 to 25 percent in the three years prior to the closure, according to federal data. The plant’s owners cited competition from cheap natural gas as the reason for its closure in July 2023. Two other coal-fired plants in Pennsylvania, Keystone and Conemaw, are scheduled to close by the end of 2028 to comply with Biden administration rules on wastewater discharges from power plants.
Speculation has been rife since last summer about whether the Homer City site would be used for a new natural gas plant or even a solar farm. William A. Wexler, chairman and CEO of Homer City Holdings LLC, declined to answer specific questions about the site’s future.
“Since the closure, the board and management have been working tirelessly on a redevelopment plan that will create many more jobs in the long term than were lost a year ago and provide even greater economic benefits to the region and commonwealth,” Wexler said in an email.
Homer City Holdings still pays property taxes on the plant, but stopping that flow of money would deal a financial blow to the Homer Center School District, which relies on the plant for 12 percent of its property tax revenue, or about $749,000 a year.
“We may have to make some very tough decisions and look at every aspect of our budget from staffing to expenses to upcoming capital projects,” said school district Superintendent Ralph Cecere Jr., adding that the $749,000 would be enough to pay the salaries of at least five teachers.
Rob Nimick, manager of the Homer City Borough and Central Indiana County Water District, isn’t waiting for the smokestacks to be removed to plan for the town’s future. He’s applying for $11 million in state and federal grants to turn the sleepy town of about 1,700 people into a magnet for hikers, campers and anglers from Pittsburgh.
Nimic recently won about $3.8 million in federal funding to clean up a local stream that’s been polluted by coal mining for decades. Ribbons of rusty orange and milky water from closed mines flow into the blue-green stream, stinking like rotten eggs, and keeping trout and anglers away. Statewide, grants worth $489 million have been awarded from the bipartisan Infrastructure Act’s Abandoned Mine Sites program, according to the Interior Department.
But Pennsylvania lawmakers have rejected three requests for additional federal funding for the Homer City Borough to demolish dilapidated buildings on Main Street, a bustling thoroughfare in the city’s coal-mining days that was deserted on a recent June afternoon. No customers entered the only businesses open on the block: a pizza place, a candy store and a thrift store.
“We’re a coal industry community that lost everything, so I don’t understand why we would lose this funding,” Nimick said.
Homer City Borough Clerk Tonya Weller said the town Biden officials on their own.
“We are very much a coal community,” she said. “That’s who we are, and we’re proud of that. But that’s not the case anymore. So we have to reinvent ourselves, and we don’t have the resources to do that.”
Clara Enss-Morss contributed to this report.
Fixes
In an earlier version of this story, Homer Center School District Superintendent Ralph Cecere Jr. incorrectly stated that the Homer City coal-fired power plant accounts for 12.4 percent of the district’s property tax revenue. After the story was published, he was corrected to say the power plant accounts for 12 percent.
