"End of An Era, Corette Coal Plant Prepares for Mothball"

"It isn’t on its dying breath, but the J.E. Corette coal-fired power plant, for 40 years Billings’ worst air polluter, could be weeks away from its last gasp.

In 73 days, the final chunks of Wyoming coal will drop into Corette’s furnace, and when those final embers fade, the 46-year-old power plant will stop pulsing its 154 megawatts onto the Western power grid. For perhaps the only time since Corette first fired up in 1968, there will not be a coal pile on Billings’ South Side, or railcars of coal parked on the power plant’s spur waiting to feed the beast.

Corette’s 35 workers will leave the PPL Montana parking lot April 15, lock the gate and, with exception of one or two men kept on for maintenance, not return."

Tom Lutey reports for the Billings Gazette February 1, 2015.