Daring, but hey, if it works in Guyana and Niger, why not try it here at home?
/
Homer City Generating Station imploded, marking the end of an era in Indiana County
CHANGE: Reversal of fortune in Homer City: new manufacturing project a ‘Game Changer.’
HOMER CITY, PA — Eleven days after the massive smokestacks and cooling towers of Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant came down in a dramatic fashion in this Indiana County village, causing both emotional and economic distress and a sense of hopelessness, Homer City Redevelopment announced that an even bigger natural gas power center would be built in its place.
The Homer City Energy campus will be a series of natural gas plants that will power a massive data center campus.
…. The emotion coming from hometown boy Shawn Steffee was palpable — not just because the build will resurrect Homer City, which has seen six generations of Steffees, but also because it will create thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs for at least the next four to six years.
“It is a game changer for the region and for the state of Pennsylvania,” said Steffee, the business agent for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 154, in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Steffee said part of what makes this a big deal is that the HCR is building up to 4.5 gigawatts of natural gas generation. Homer City will now be the largest electricity producer in the state, and Steffee’s members in Western Pennsylvania will be instrumental in building and maintaining the facility.
Opportunity, Steffee said, has not been available to his members for four years, forcing them to leave their families and communities behind to travel to New Mexico, Washington, Ohio, West Virginia, and Tennessee because nothing new was being built in Pennsylvania.
“What this means for us is I can bring the boilermakers home back to Pennsylvania. This will be anywhere from a four-to-six-year job. They will need hundreds of boilermakers and thousands of construction workers. This is good for everybody in the building trades,” Steffee said.
