For a half century, the pair of towering smokestacks at the J.H. Campbell power generating complex have stood sentry at Port Sheldon for those navigating by land or lake.
But the familiar industrial landscape along Lake Michigan and the Pigeon River will be changing.
Owner Consumers Energy will “decommission” – or shut down – all three coal-fired electrical units that make up the Campbell Complex by May 31, 2025. Demolition of the plant -- including the 400-foot and 650-foot smokestacks – could begin as early as 2026.
As part of the decommissioning process that Consumers Energy has used at the nine other coal-powered plants it has closed since 2016, the company conducted public tours of the massive complex on Sept. 21, pulling back the curtain on a neighbor most guests have only seen from behind barbed wire.
“This plant is woven into the fabric of this community and the surrounding area,” said Vice President of General Operations Norm Kapla, who lives nearby in Grand Haven Township. “It and our excellent workforce have produced reliable, affordable electricity that has powered progress for decades. … But now we know cleaner, renewable ways to generate electricity.”
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Photo by Kym ReinstadlerTowering smokestacks of the J. H. Campbell coal-fueled power generating complex have served as navigational markers to Port Sheldon for half a century. With Consumer Energy’s shift to renewable electricity, the plant will be decommissioned next year.
Consumers’ last coal plant
About $1 billion has been invested in air quality control systems at the J.H. Campbell Generating Complex, according to Consumers Energy, yet environmental reports rank it among Michigan’s largest industrial sources of greenhouse gases.
Most of the complex could continue operating for another 15 years before its design would be considered obsolete, but Consumers Energy announced in 2021 that it would decommission all its coal-fired plants by 2025. The three units at the J.H. Campbell Complex will be the last to go cold. The first opened in 1962, the second in 1967, and the third in 1980. Together, the units generate about 1,450 megawatts of electricity – enough to serve about a million people.
The power generated at J.H. Campbell is distributed through
MISO, the electric grid operator for 15 states in the central United States and the Canadian province of Manitoba. Power generated at Port Sheldon may or may not be used locally, Kapla said.
There were 250 people who registered for one of 13 runs on a tour bus within the week after the opportunity was announced in late August, said spokesman Brian Wheeler. No further public tours are planned.
A rare peek inside
The bus transported guests of all ages around carefully groomed foothills of coal brought by rail all the way from the state of Wyoming. As recently as 2022, 14 sets of CSX trains were hauling coal from those mines to J.H. Campbell. With decommissioning in sight, that number has decreased to eight or nine, Kapla said.
“It usually takes about 10 hours to empty a train,” Site Manager Nate Hoffman told guests. “But it takes longer in the dead of winter because the coal in the cars freezes coming across the prairies.”
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Photo by Kym ReinstadlerRegistered guests on 13 public tours of the J. H. Campbell on Sept. 21 marveled at the size of gigantic turbines that spin to generate electricity that helps power the central United States as well as the Canadian province of Manitoba.
Children in the group chuckled as Hoffman described a cumbersome process of warming the rail cars just enough to thaw vast blocks of frozen coal, then mechanically turning a segment of several cars over simultaneously for dumping.
Coal-fired plants generate electricity by burning coal in a boiler. The burning coal heats water, piped through miles of steel tubing, to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Pressurized steam rises and is routed to turbines, which spin and feed a generator to produce electricity.
Hoffman and Kapla also led guests inside to a fourth-floor turbine viewing platform in Unit 3 where the noise — despite mandatory ear protection — was ear-splitting and the temperature was about 100 degrees.
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Photo by Kym ReinstadlerTowering smokestacks of the J. H. Campbell coal-fueled power generating complex have served as navigational markers to Port Sheldon for half a century. With Consumer Energy’s shift to renewable electricity, the plant will be decommissioned next year.
Some guests inquired about training of the plant operators and asked whether it’s likely employees will be able to find similar employment when J.H. Campbell closes.
Hoffman said the number of workers employed at the plant has decreased from about 310 to about 240 over the past couple of years in anticipation of the closure.
Kapla said the company is working to ensure that employees who don’t want to retire and wish to remain with the company will have a role.
‘Amazing … unique’
“The vast scale of things in a place like this is so amazing and so unique,” said Stephanie Aubin, 35. The Holland woman said she has become fascinated with abandoned places that used to be part of everyday life as a result of watching
“The Proper People” on YouTube.
The J.H. Campbell plant will continue generating power until its decommission date and is a long way from being abandoned, but Aubin figured the public tour was her best shot at seeing a coal-fired plant up close.
Aubin also brought along her daughters, Amelia, 5, and Ellie, 2. The girls recently experienced their first power outage and are trying to make sense of it.
“A big tree fell on wires outside, then things inside the house didn’t work,” explained Amelia, a kindergartener at Black River Public School in Holland.
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Kym Reinstadler The number of coal trains to the J.H. Campbell plant has decreased to nine weekly from 14 over the past two years.
When the girls realized that electronic devices, including the light in the refrigerator, weren’t coming on, they began investigating what else in their house was no longer working properly. Could they still open their dresser drawers? What about the closet door?
“It’s not easy to understand how turning on the light in your kitchen starts with a long train and lots of black piles,’ said John Garrod of Kalamazoo, the girls’ grandfather, a documentary filmmaker who produced safety training videos for Consumers Energy. “It’s complicated. Seeing the train and the coal piles gives an idea of the many things that come first so we can turn on a light.”
Turning to natural gas
To prepare for a coal-free future, Consumers Energy purchased a 1,200-megawatt natural gas-fueled station in the southwest Michigan community of Covert. The utility has been operating this site since June 2023. Producing electricity from natural gas requires less water and produces fewer harmful emissions.
Together with natural gas-powered plants in Zeeland and Jackson, the Covert plant supplies electricity to meet peak energy demands when sufficient renewable reserves of wind and solar energy are not available.
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Kym ReinstadlerStephanie Aubin of Holland finds the vast machinery on the J.H. Campbell Unit 3 turbine deck amazing, kindling her fascination with abandoned old technologies.
Tour-goers wanted to know how the 2,000-acre J.H. Campbell site will be redeveloped, but Kapla said that right now only a broad-based “people, planet, prosperity” framework for determining the best use of the land exists.
Redevelopment may include wind farms, solar projects and battery storage, but nothing’s been decided yet, he said.
Port Sheldon Township planning
Port Sheldon Township is engaging the public in updating its master plan, which includes discussions on how to respond to the retirement of the J.H. Campbell complex. Most residents want to preserve its natural environmental features, he said.
“Although the parcels currently owned by Consumers Energy do equal around 2,000 acres, much of that property will remain in use as it currently does,” said Michael Sabatino, Port Sheldon Township supervisor. “For example, the approximately 700-acre site occupied by the fly ash landfills east of Lakeshore Drive will remain and be monitored for 30 years post-power production. Additionally, the power transmission lines and substation parcels will remain as part of the electrical grid.”
In past discussions with Consumers, Sabatino said, it was clear that wind farms and solar projects were unlikely because of the relatively small size of the site. Battery site storage is an option, but township officials have not yet seen any proposals for such a use, he said.
Consumers Energy is Port Sheldon Township’s largest taxpayer, accounting for 15% of revenues in 2023 and an estimated 9% in 2025, Sabatino said.