A growing city has growing needs for electricity. The power plants in Omaha were located downtown for nearly 75 years, until the Omaha Public Power District, or OPPD built a massive new facility on the Missouri River near Florence in an area already thick with public works in 1954. Since then, though, it has been a site of constant pollution for the city and was targeted for closure. This is a history of the OPPD North Omaha Station.
Trading Unhealthly Energy for Profits
For 70 years, the OPPD North Omaha Station has stood as a textbook example of environmental racism, disproportionately impacting the health of the Black and working-class residents in the surrounding 68110 and 68111 zip codes. Supposed victories in closing parts of the plant ring hollow because these units were simply shifted from coal to natural gas—another fossil fuel—while other parts of the plant continue to pump pollutants into the community. OPPD presented the initial 2023 deadline for a total coal exit as a moral and environmental necessity—yet it was discarded at the first sign of logistical friction and never revealed for its political reasons.
Experts have stated that OPPD is lying about its plant’s effects on the community. Every year of delay represents thousands of tons of additional carbon and particulate matter released into an atmosphere already in crisis and shows how OPPD is trading long-term climate stability for short-term industrial convenience.
The repeated delays in closing the plant—first to 2026, and now to at least 2028—reveal priorities where corporate growth—specifically for the insatiable energy demands of new data centers in southwest Omaha—take precedent over the physical health of North Omaha and especially our kids. OPPD has tried shifting the blame of Omaha’s economic expansion onto the lungs of people already marginalized by systemic racism and white supremacy. Acting as an arm of corporate power over Black people and working class people in North Omaha, OPPD functions as one of the feet on the necks of the community in a vicious way…