Last month, the last coal plant in Washington was preparing to shut its doors forever. Its acres-wide coal pile was all but gone.

After years of careful planning and negotiations, coal in Washington was dying a slow, quiet and mostly peaceful death.

But then the Department of Energy intervened, issuing an emergency order forcing the plant to stay open for another 90 days. It’s one of several orders from the Trump administration affecting five coal plants across the nation that Brad Plumer and I reported on last week. More such orders could be on the way.

The plant closure in Centralia, Wash., has been held up as an example of a model agreement to phase out fossil fuels in a way that balances the interests of the local community, workers, industry and environmentalists. It had been in the works since 2011.

Departing workers were scheduled to receive payments of around $50,000 each to help ease the transition into their next jobs. A state law prohibiting Washington utilities from buying power from coal took effect at the start of this year.

As Brad and I wrote last week, the Department of Energy has taken the extraordinary step of requiring coal plants across the country to remain open, despite some of the plants being in disrepair and what could ultimately amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in costs.