The Indiana community caught between coal and the data center boom

Photography by Neeta R. Satam

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.”

In 2018, Deardorff received good — and unexpected — news. Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) would close the Schahfer plant by 2023, as part of a transition to renewable energy and an effort to cut costs. The utility later pushed out the closure date to December 2025. 

When that deadline finally arrived, however, the plant didn’t close. The Trump administration intervened in late December and ordered the Schahfer plant to stay online. It’s one of five aging coal facilities that the Trump administration has forced to stay open past their planned closure dates. 

The extension was a huge disappointment for those hoping to move on from Schahfer’s legacy of pollution. But by then, residents of Jasper County were preoccupied with a new threat. 

Rumors began to swirl last summer about NIPSCO’s intent to develop agricultural land for a huge data center and natural-gas power plant. At a county meeting in October, more details emerged. 

The gas plant would supply energy not to the local community, which is served by an electric co-op, but to the data center. Recent filings and an announcement by NIPSCO suggest that the center’s supercomputing systems would likely be used for Amazon Web Services. The plant would be built and owned by a controversial subsidiary of NIPSCO’s parent company, NiSource, created specifically to serve large-load customers. Beyond that information, NIPSCO has disclosed little. 

“This isn’t for us, the customers,” said Terry Wellsand, who lives near the site of the proposed data center. ​“This is for the big boys.”

Wellsand and other residents are not going along with the plan quietly. They have turned out in droves to community meetings, organized online, and appealed directly to county commissioners at multiple hourslong hearings.

“Wheatfield is a dangerous trend we’ve seen of AI locating next to existing coal infrastructure,” said Ashley Williams, executive director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana, which is now focused on opposing data centers throughout the state. ​“It benefits NIPSCO because of interconnection with the grid, but it’s posing an extreme cumulative impact for the surrounding community.” 

Jasper County finds itself at the center of two defining energy trends in President Donald Trump’s second term: the revival of old coal plants and the mad dash to build data centers and gas-fired power plants to fuel them. It serves as a reminder that the communities already marred by fossil-fuel developments are those most likely to shoulder the burden of the emerging data center boom. 

Coal is part of the fabric of Indiana.

The Illinois Basin is one of the largest coal deposits in the country. It stretches through the southern half of Indiana — a state that produces more coal than almost any other and burns through more than any other except Texas. The red state does not have a renewable-energy mandate. In fact, under a 2025 state law, it considers gas and propane ​“clean energy.”

That’s why it came as a surprise to environmentalists when in 2018 NIPSCO announced plans to become coal-free by 2028 and slash its carbon emissions by 90%. 

For Deardorff, the announcement was a relief: Schahfer would have to shut down. 

“NIPSCO would not be in my sunset anymore,” she said.

At first, things went according to plan. NIPSCO closed two of Schahfer’s four coal-fired units, representing over 1,000 megawatts, in 2021. The remaining two coal-fired units, totaling 850 megawatts, were slated to stop running by the end of 2025. 

Then, Trump took office for his second term. In May 2025, the Department of Energy ordered a Michigan coal plant, set to close eight days later, to stay open. It was an unprecedented use of a federal law intended for when storms or other temporary emergencies threaten grid reliability — and an opening salvo in what would prove to be a war on the war on coal.

Environmental and consumer advocates immediately challenged the move through the regulatory process and, later, in court. The Michigan attorney general called the administration’s tactic illegal and requested a rehearing before the Department of Energy. 

The widespread opposition didn’t dissuade Trump. In the months that followed, his administration extended operations for six more aging coal- and oil-fired power plants across the nation and the original 90-day order for the Michigan plant multiple times. 

Two days before Christmas, Schahfer got its order to continue running.

As it had with other plants, the Department of Energy stated that Schahfer needed to operate because of an electricity emergency. But that claim was dubious at best and ran counter to findings from grid operators, utilities, and independent analysts. 

NIPSCO’s own analysis showed that it had enough generation without the aging facility. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which runs the grid covering most of Indiana and parts of 14 other states, had already made arrangements to backfill the lost capacity. It did not project any energy shortfalls due to the closure. 

Schahfer is also half-broken. One of its two remaining units has been sidelined since July, and NIPSCO estimated it would take six months to get it working again. NIPSCO did not respond to questions about whether repairs were underway. 

NIPSCO filings estimate that repairing the broken unit and continuing to operate the plant could cost more than $1 billion through 2027. 

In March, the Sierra Club and other local and national environmental groups filed a legal challenge to the order. 

“From an economic perspective, the order makes no sense,” said Sierra Club Environmental Law Program senior attorney Tony Mendoza. ​“From a reliability perspective, the order makes no sense. The only logical explanation is the administration wants to prop up the coal industry.”

This wasn’t the first time the Trump administration had intervened to help keep Schahfer online. 

In November, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed allowing Schahfer and 10 other plants to keep placing coal ash in unlined pits until 2031. That would be a full decade beyond the deadlines originally set by federal rules and three years longer than a previous extension allowed. An executive at NiSource last summer asked the EPA for the latest extension, arguing that the Schahfer plant would close unless it could continue to discard the waste material in this way. 

Storing coal ash in unlined pits poses major health hazards for those living near the facilities, since it can leach into groundwater tapped for drinking. NIPSCO’s own federally mandated groundwater reports revealed troubling contamination at test wells on the Schahfer site, with levels of molybdenum, lithium, cobalt, and arsenic significantly above federal safety standards.

NIPSCO told Canary Media that, based on its monitoring, the contaminants have not moved beyond the plant site. But environmental advocates remain unconvinced. 

“It is likely leaking and endangering the groundwater and health of everyone who lives around the Schahfer facility,” said Earthjustice senior attorney Sameer Doshi. 

In late March, Trump extended the emergency order, forcing the Schahfer plant to stay online for another 90 days. But by that time, Deardorff and other local residents had turned their focus to the new fossil-fuel power plant and data center slated to go up next door.

Terry Wellsand caught wind of NIPSCO’s plan for a new buildout last summer while attending a county government meeting with his son. Wellsand, a construction contractor and pastor at a church in the nearby town of Kouts, was there to learn about a potential increase in property taxes. But what grabbed his attention was talk that NIPSCO was planning to rezone swaths of farmland for industrial use, specifically for a data center and a big gas-fired power plant. 

Sure enough, some months later, Wellsand came across a small sign staked in a corner of that farmland near the county road. It advertised a Jasper County Planning Commission meeting to be held in October. The topic? Rezoning the land.

At the October meeting, two NIPSCO representatives asked the 10-member Planning Commission to change 11 of the utility’s parcels, adjacent to the Schahfer plant, from agricultural to industrial zoning. 

NIPSCO consultant Jack Huls told the county officials and gathered residents that he knew of no specific plans for the land. The company just wanted to standardize zoning, he said. But after a commission member asked questions, NIPSCO public outreach director Rick Calinski acknowledged that the utility had indeed submitted a study to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator regarding a potential new power plant on that site. 

In fact, NIPSCO had already filed plans with state regulators for a more-than-2-gigawatt gas plant at the Schahfer site meant to power a data center. NIPSCO representatives didn’t mention the state permit filing.

But Wellsand, Deardorff, and others there were already aware of the plans. They had done their homework. ​“Evidently, these guys don’t do any research,” Wellsand told the crowd sarcastically, referring to the NIPSCO representatives. 

As the meeting progressed, one citizen after another accused NIPSCO of being sneaky and lamented the impact the gas plant and data center would have on their lives. The planning commission ultimately deferred a decision and vowed instead to seek more information. It would take the issue up again in December. 

Wellsand snapped into action. He called Bryce Gustafson, an organizer with the Citizens Action Coalition whom he’d met during a successful campaign against BP’s controversial proposal to capture carbon dioxide at its Northwest Indiana refinery and sequester it underground somewhere in the region. Gustafson had already helped Indiana residents fight dozens of data center proposals elsewhere in the state.

Then, Wellsand spread the word to fellow residents: Come to the Wheatfield Public Library on Nov. 18 if you want to learn more about NIPSCO’s plan and fight it. 

The meeting was standing room only. ​“If we don’t try to stop them,” he said later, ​“of course they’ll get their way.”

On Dec. 15, the Jasper County Planning Commission gathered for its meeting at the county fairgrounds instead of its usual office. The commissioners were expecting a crowd.

Their expectation was right. Dozens of citizens packed the room to ask questions and voice opposition to NIPSCO’s plan. A leader of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 came to support the proposal and the jobs it would create. The commissioners presided at folding tables before the crowd, and over the course of almost four hours, residents and NIPSCO representatives took turns at the lectern, each making their case. 

NIPSCO representatives apologized for being ​“hasty” and ​“unprepared” when they had appeared before the Planning Commission two months earlier. They asked the commissioners to approve their updated proposal, which would rezone about 300 acres to house a data center. The new proposal did not include land for the gas plant. 

The utility promised billions of dollars’ worth of investment, about 300 permanent jobs at the data center, hundreds of union construction jobs, and a tax infusion that would support new schools, firefighting equipment, and parks.

In the end, eight commissioners voted to oppose the rezoning, and one recused himself. 

Deardorff, Wellsand, and other residents hailed it as a major victory. 

But the Planning Commission doesn’t ultimately have power over zoning decisions. It merely makes recommendations. The three-member Jasper County Commission decides — and that body would meet in early February.

Wellsand and other opponents realized they needed to keep citizens mobilized. They scheduled another meeting at the library for Jan. 26. That day, a winter storm hit Northwest Indiana, bringing frigid temperatures and high winds. Wellsand considered canceling the meeting, but the timing was too critical.

It was a full house anyway. People made their way through the dark and icy streets and took their places in the bright, friendly confines of the library. With performative flair, Wellsand read from newspaper clippings and scribbled calculations on the library’s whiteboard to try to disprove NIPSCO’s claims about the benefits the data center would bring. He circulated a NIPSCO handout touting jobs and economic advantages. 

His interpretation: ​“This is a bunch of garbage!” 

One week later, on Feb. 2, the three members of the Jasper County Commission met at the fairgrounds to vote on NIPSCO’s rezoning proposal. 

Local residents pleaded with them to deny the request. But the outcome this time was different: The commissioners voted unanimously to support the rezoning. In their telling, the project’s approval was a foregone conclusion. 

“We can say no today and we’re still gonna get a data center,” Rein Bontreger, the commission’s president, said after the vote. ​“There’s legislation advancing through the state legislature right now that’s going to give the state authority to site a data center, and Jasper County is one of the specific locations.” 

He was referring to a bill introduced in February by state Rep. Kendell Culp that would allow data centers to be built on land zoned for agriculture, as long as the soil is not classified as high quality. Culp, a Republican, represents the area surrounding Wheatfield, the coal plant, and the proposed data center. 

His bill was just the latest move by Indiana politicians trying to court data centers. In 2019, Indiana passed a law exempting large data centers from paying sales tax on their energy or equipment purchases. 

“The governor is hell-bent on putting all these data centers in Indiana,” Wellsand said. 

Indeed, Northwest Indiana has already become a hub for data center development because of its proximity to two regional power grids and fiber-optic cables, water from Lake Michigan, and generous state tax incentives. Five hyperscaler data centers recently went online or are being built in Indiana, and at least a dozen more have been proposed, according to research by the Citizens Action Coalition.

Culp’s bill passed the state’s House the same day as the February County Commission meeting, and Eric Koch, a longtime state legislator who serves on a national energy-supply task force, signed on as a lead sponsor in the Indiana Senate. 

By voting for NIPSCO’s rezoning, the county commissioners said they could negotiate a better deal than if they denied the rezoning but had the state impose a data center on them anyway. NIPSCO declined to disclose timelines for building the data center and gas plant.

“We appreciate the support of Jasper County Commissioners in rezoning land adjacent to Schahfer for future economic development opportunities, including the potential for a data center,” the company told Canary Media by email.

Deardorff, who was ​“heartbroken” about the vote, said the county commissioners had been too hasty to assume ​“they were back up against a wall,” as Commissioner Ryan Hilton had put it. After all, when the legislative session ended a month later, Culp’s bill had not advanced in the Senate. 

“It really saddens me,” Deardorff said.

Don and Gena Carlson live directly west of the Schahfer plant and hence near the site of the potential data center and gas plant. Gena moved to the area with her family in 1971, when she was six years old, and grew up amid her parents’ large garden and her aunt’s blueberry farm. The couple spent some time living in Chicago and Wisconsin but returned to Jasper County in 1991, when Don’s parents bought them a manufactured home. 

That home was destroyed in a fire during the pandemic. They rebuilt — a cozy, boxy house with sweeping views of the surrounding fields and woods. A sign in the yard advertises their singing ministry, which performs Southern gospel music at local care centers and churches.

Gena said that they had been saving money to expand their home, but their enthusiasm has been deflated by the coal plant’s continued operation and the prospect of the new facilities.

The Carlsons worry about the cancer risk from pollution caused by the plant and the coal ash, but the kind of comprehensive testing needed to rule out coal-ash contamination is prohibitively expensive. (Jasper County ranks about in the middle of the state’s counties for cancer incidence.) 

A parade of trucks carries coal ash down the road near the Carlsons’ home, as NIPSCO moves waste from its Michigan City plant to a coal-ash landfill at the Schahfer plant. Gena said she sometimes sees dozens of the vehicles in a day. 

The Carlsons don’t want coal plant workers to lose their jobs, but they want relief from the pollution. And they certainly don’t want more of it from the new facilities. 

“We’re just not happy with the answer” the three county commissioners gave NIPSCO, Don said. ​“They just do whatever they want to do.” 

Two months after the Jasper County Commission greenlit NIPSCO’s zoning request, Don joined other residents for a meeting at the Wheatfield library on April 13. The evening was unseasonably warm and humid. Redbud and magnolia trees were in bloom, and the surrounding fields were a lush spring green. 

Wellsand had invited residents here once again because he and other leaders felt that there was still hope of beating back NIPSCO’s plans. 

Though the company had gotten its way in February, NIPSCO had said that the rezoned parcel was intended for the data center only. It still needed to convince the County Commission to rezone an adjacent site, where it proposed to build the gas power plant. 

The Planning Commission was scheduled to consider that proposal in late April. The residents at the Wheatfield library on April 13 seemed more knowledgeable — and even angrier — about NIPSCO’s plans than they had been in January. They lamented the potential effect on sandhill cranes, on their water, on their daily lives. 

Ashley Hammac, a soil scientist, plugged his campaign for the state legislature. A Democrat, he aimed to unseat Culp, the sponsor of the unsuccessful bill that county commissioners had said was the reason they had approved NIPSCO’s rezoning request. 

Deardorff spoke, too, lambasting NIPSCO’s proposal for the usual reasons. She also made a point to talk about the Schahfer plant’s pollution. She had collected well-water samples from residents to test for coal-ash contamination, and she explained that the results could provide more fodder to fight the company.

The following week, the Planning Commission voted 6–3 against the rezoning plan. But then, on May 4, the three-member County Commission held its own vote. At this meeting, NIPSCO representatives submitted a rezoning request, but to the surprise of attendees, they said the site was intended for just a parking lot and some related buildings, not a gas plant. As it had previously, the County Commission voted in favor of NIPSCO. 

What will happen next is unclear. Deardorff thinks the utility will include the gas plant on the land that was rezoned earlier for the data center. Ultimately, it may not matter. Each time NIPSCO has gone before the County Commission, it has gotten what it wants. 

“Some people think there is no chance of defeating NIPSCO and that, in our county in particular, NIPSCO will always get its way. County officials will always bend to the will of NIPSCO,” Deardorff said. 

But she still believes that the community can stop — or at least stall — the project.

Under terms set by county commissioners, NIPSCO must sign a community benefits agreement with the county by July 6 or the data center rezoning will be reversed. Citizens will presumably have a chance to weigh in on the agreement before the three commissioners, one of whom is up for reelection in November. Various state permits still need to be issued for the data center and gas plant, giving furious residents other avenues to voice their opposition. 

Deardorff is taking the long view. These days, watching the coal plant outside her windows provides some useful perspective. Though the Schahfer plant was ordered to keep running, Deardorff sees its telltale plume of yellow pollution far less often than she used to — it seems the plant is not running at high capacity. 

“I try to temper my hope so that I’m not crushed when things don’t work out as I think they should,” she said. ​“But I will continue to work to stop this.”