The plant has been the subject of controversy concerning a series of leaks since 2007[4][5] Reed-Custer Community Unit School District 255 educates students from in and around Braidwood, Custer Park, Essex, and Godley.

[11] Deposits were substantial and the demand for coal in nearby Chicago was high, so companies rushed to acquire land and set up operations.

A mining boomtown sprang up, a post office was established in 1867,[12] and the community was called Keeversville.

[13] James Braidwood was an early member of the community, and in 1872 he was hired by one company to superintend the sinking of the first deep mine shaft.

Hundreds of people left Braidwood following the area's worst strike in 1877, when strike-breakers were imported by the coal companies, reducing the actual recorded census of 1880 to near the 6,000 number.

[16]Businesses and the lives of residents were centered on the coal mines, with economic prosperity and depression occurring in their turn.

Mines cut back operations during summer months, when warm weather reduced the demand for coal, leaving many miners unemployed.

The disputes between coal companies and miners over wages and working conditions were always rancorous and often violent, typical for the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.