This story was produced as part of Climate Solutions, a collaboration focused on community engagement and solutions-based reporting to help Central Pennsylvania move toward climate literacy, resilience and adaptation. StateImpact Pennsylvania convened the collaboration; WITF is a Climate Solutions partner. Other Climate Solutions partners are Franklin & Marshall Center for Public Opinion, La Voz Latina, Sankofa African American Theatre Company, Shippensburg University, Q’Hubo News, and the York Daily Record. Edna Fund remembers what Centralia, Washington was like in the 1960s, before the coal mine and power plant opened. She and a friend drove to the site a few miles from the city, where they were going to college. It was all farmland. Owners were selling their land to make way for industry. Years later, she would visit the site again as an elected official. “And I remember looking out at the area, like, this was farming land. And now we’re having all this coal being mined, and there’s a train coming in and out,” Fund said. “Pretty amazing to see the transformation.” The land ultimately became a nearly 10,000-acre open pit mine with a 1,340-megawatt power plant. It became Lewis County’s highest-paying employer, she said, and “people drove from long ways to get here to work there.” A half-century later, climate change brought focus on polluting power plants. Environmental groups and some state lawmakers started pushing to shut down the plant. Fund was on Centralia city council at the time. Please take a look at the new openings in our newsroom. “It was packed, packed in the halls of the legislature. And you would see pipefitters and union folks up there in their uniforms. And then you’d see the environmentalists there–and they’re on two sides,” Fund said. After a few years of lawsuits, proposals and protests, then-Gov. Christine Gregoire gathered members of each group – government, environmental,... |