The world wants American coal. Curtis Bay residents say they pay the price.

Charles Schultz was sitting in his living room when it sounded like a bomb went off. Then the sky turned dark. Throughout his 50-plus years living in Curtis Bay — an isolated community wedged into the southern corner of Baltimore — he’d gotten used to seeing soot pile up on his windowsill. Now coal dust was raining down onto his street, a tower smoldering on the CSX coal pier just a stone’s throw from his doorstep.