"In rural Jasper County, two defining energy trends of the Trump era — reviving coal and building gas-powered data centers — are converging."
"JASPER COUNTY, Indiana—Barb Deardorff loves her living room’s wide picture windows. She can gaze out at the cornfields, where sandhill cranes warble and graze, and in the evening, she can unwind from her hectic job as a teachers’ union organizer by watching the sun go down.
Her sunset views, however, are often marred by the billowing plumes from a massive coal plant located near the town of Wheatfield.
Aside from her college years, Deardorff has always lived in Jasper County, an agricultural region in northwestern Indiana. She is the fifth generation of her family to call this area home. The towering smokestacks of the R.M. Schahfer Generating Station, built in the 1970s, have been unwelcome neighbors for as long as she can remember. As a kid, she saw the coal-ash landfill being built “layer by layer by layer” when her school bus drove around the plant’s perimeter.
“They’ve just been in the background of my whole life,” Deardorff said. “For better or worse, they’ve always been literally and figuratively on my horizon.”"
Kari Lydersen reports for Canary Media with photography by Neeta R. Satam May 14, 2026.
