Mike Adinolfe, 41, began working at the Somerset Operating Company in Barker at 23. His father Joe worked at the plant as a welder and a repairman before him.
‘Where the Fire Is Going Out on Coal’
The community is fearful of what will happen once it shutters.
For The New York Times, March 2020.
“It is the last coal-fired power plant in New York State. White steam trails from its smokestack like a banner flying in the wind, visible for miles across flat farm fields near Lake Ontario. But not for long.
Sometime this month, the 44 remaining workers at the Somerset Operating Company will power it down for the last time. They have long planned to gather ceremonially in a cavernous hall, beside the plant’s roaring turbine, as it goes quiet, but now coronavirus restrictions may deny them that moment of closure.
“This plant is my life,” Darlene Lutz, 60, said, then burst into tears. She started out shoveling coal, then rose to become the plant’s first and only female operating-room engineer. She had even persuaded her husband to take a job there.
Across the country, coal plants are going offline, priced out by natural gas and squeezed by regulations and incentives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moving to clean, renewable energy sources. The closures bring common challenges: lost tax revenues and jobs, efforts to retrain workers and clean up sites.
And this one, of course, comes as the state battles the economic headwinds of the nation’s largest coronavirus outbreak.
But every plant has a specific place in a community, and each community has its own story of costs and resilience.”
The coal plant looms large in Barker, with industrial smokestacks that stand red barns and lakeside gazebos.
Vince Muto, 63, an operator in the power block and plant veteran of 35 years. When the plant closes, he will retire. "I'm going to ride it out. Ride into the sunset (...) I would have liked to go out on my own terms," Muto said. "But it's tough for the younger kids."
A General Electric switching locomotive left idle.
Explosion-proof buttons and an explosion-proof phone in an elevator at the observation building.
A six-mile loop of railway tracks brought coal that was whisked up covered conveyor belts, crushed to powder and burned.
Darlene Lutz is the only first and only female control operator ever to work at the plant. In 29 years, she worked every job in the plant, from cutting the grass to shoveling coal, before becoming an operator. She has plans to pursue another career in the medical field after the close of the plant, but will miss the community of her coworkers. She described years of camaraderie, with gatherings for birthdays, retirements, and more. "These guys are like brothers...I never had a brother. We talk about everything," Lutz said. "Within the walls of this power plant, we're a family."
A chalkboard displayed a poem that recalled the camaraderie among workers at the Somerset Operating Company.