"The smokestacks, more than 800 feet tall, barely peek from behind the tall pines just across from Chester Allen's farm, but to him the damage from Plant Yates' coal is plain to see."

"SARGENT, Ga. – The smokestacks, more than 800 feet tall, barely peek from behind the tall pines just across from Chester Allen's farm, but to him the damage from Plant Yates' coal is plain to see."

""Dang-near everything rusts out early over here," said Allen, as he walked with his dog, Bogey, past a rusty disc harrow on the farm where he's lived for more than thirty years. His drag, steel gates, fence posts, barn roof – all rusted. Equipment this new – 15 years old, he reckons – shouldn't be this rusty.

And maybe they wouldn't be, but for the fact that Plant Yates, a coal-fired plant that opened in 1950, spewed 3.4 million pounds of corrosive acids into the air in 2011.

The impact of Yates and other coal plants in Georgia goes far beyond some rusty farm equipment. Emissions of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids, soot, smog-causing gases and mercury take a health toll. Coal trains and ash ponds weigh on the land. But soon Sargent and two other communities in rural Georgia will get a reprieve."

Brett Israel reports for Environmental Health News in part two of a two-part series July 2, 2013. [2]

SEE ALSO:

Part One: "Coal's Slipping Grip: New England, Virtually Coal-Free, Leads the Way" [3]

"White House Has Coal Country on the Defensive" (AP) [4]