By Daria Bachmann, The Revelator. Originally posted on The Revelator under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

The three smokestacks of PacifiCorp’s coal-fired Hunter Power Plant loom in the skies on a 1,000-acre site just south of Castle Dale, Utah.

Commissioned in 1978, the Hunter plant burns millions of tons of coal a year and generates more than 1,500 megawatts of electricity for use in nearby communities.

But it also generates something else: greenhouse gases and Toxic pollutants, including coal ash.