Fall of America’s Tallest Smokestack a Signal of Industrial Decline

Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant succumbs to eco-activism.

AP/Gene J. Puskar
The smokestacks of a former coal-fired power plant fall in a planned demolition at Homer City, Pennsylvania, March 22, 2025 AP/Gene J. Puskar

HOMER CITY, Pennsylvania — On March 22 at 7 a.m., Shawn Steffee stood on a hill overlooking the Homer City Generating Station with his family and the community he grew up with. They were all looking at Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant for the last time — the plant he and his father, uncles, brother, and the union he had guided had all worked at for decades.

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