Big coal gave a tiny Texas town free land. There's a major catch.
SULPHUR SPRINGS — On a cold afternoon in January, Marc Maxwell strode across the historic town square in this East Texas town, pointing to all the new restaurants, bars and boutiques on its periphery. Maxwell, a jovial public servant who has been Sulphur Springs’ city manager for more than two decades, explained how the city had turned tired streets into brick-paved roads that wrap around the main square, converted a parking lot into a proper plaza and installed a row of electric car chargers near the police station.
“This used to be entirely shuttered up at night,” he said. “And now we’ve got 12 or 13 restaurants, a couple bars and a brewery. You come out here tonight for dinner and it’s alive.”
As this once-sleepy whistlestop of 16,000 residents works to revitalize its downtown and economy, Maxwell is most excited about a project that hasn’t happened yet: the transformation of a recently shuttered coal mine into what town leaders envision as a recreational paradise.
A few years ago, as Irving-based Luminant, the largest electricity generator in Texas, prepared to close the decades-old Monticello Thermo mine on the southeast edge of town, Maxwell wondered what the company planned to do with its 4,900 acres.
Read more: https://www.theeagle.com/news/state-and-regional/big-coal-gave-a-tiny-texas-town-free-land-there/article_c0eab937-e739-5a11-a52e-dd73717387bb.html
(Bryan-College Station Eagle)
