This story from 1984 on Kitgah Generating Station aka AES Someset, illustrate the paradox of what is now New York's dirtest industrial plant, when it comes to air pollution, and requires a landfill that nearly twice as much waste as Albany's Rapp Road Landfill:

"The biggest is in the the cost of preserving the environment. Somerset is described as a $1 billion plant, but actually is a $650 million power generating station, with a coal furnace at one end and a smokestack a quarter-mile away."

"That quarter-mile is filled with a jumble of buildings containing $350 million in pollution-control equipment, a complex of machines and treatment facilities that takes a score of workers to operate, and uses enough electricity to supply a city of 35,000."

"The result is that the long, low plume of smoke that drifts from the 625-foot stack over the fields of cows and crops is relatively benign, the utlility says."

"The sulfur and soot that would normally go up the stack are collected in solid form. And to avoid creating sulfur dioxide, an ingredient of acid rain - which has been blamed for damage to lakes and forests in the Northeast and Canada - the equipment uses large amounts of limestone and other substances to bind the sulfur chemically."

"The result is that the plant produces 1,250 tons of calcium sulfate and 600 tons of fly ash a day that must be hauled away."

"Disposing of this amount of material is not quite as much of a challenge as bringing in the 5,000 tons of coal that the plant burns each day. That required the construction of a 15.5-mile railroad, for $53.5 million, that connects the plant with the Conrail network."

"To supply the monthly electric needs of a family using 500 kilowatt-hours from Somerset, the utility hauls 333 pounds of coal from Pennsylvania to the site, and disposes of 110 pounds of waste."