March 6, 2018

Shinnston, W.Va. resident Sammy DeMarco is used to seeing the huge Harrison Power Station as he drives Route 20 along the banks of the West Fork River. But until last week, he didn’t know just how huge the power station’s impact was on his community, even though he’s the mayor.

“You see the stacks from the road, but you don’t see what’s going on inside. There are 232 jobs here,” he said. “That’s something I wasn’t aware of, being the mayor 100 yards away from here — what impact this place has on our economy. It’s pretty impressive.”

Sammy, and his fellow members of the Harrison County Mayors’ Association, recently took a field trip to visit Harrison.

“We tried to give them a sense of how we operate, and the commitments that we make to safety, the environment and the community,” said Harrison Director Gary Dinzeo.

In addition to highlighting the economic importance of the plant to the surrounding community, the tour was also a chance to explain the difference between regulated and merchant plants, and the broader issue of how power is generated and distributed.

The mayors toured the massive turbine deck for Units 1, 2 and 3, and also got to see what a spare turbine looks like. The tour concluded in Harrison’s nerve center, the control room.

The meeting was attended by government representatives of Lumberport, Nutter Fort, Anmoore, Clarksburg, Bridgeport, Salem and Shinnston, all located in Harrison County, W.Va.