The News-Gazette.com: Towns reflect on their investments in FutureGen

Towns reflect on their investments in FutureGen

By Tim Mitchell

Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:37 AM CDT

Millions of dollars and countless hours have been spent locally in efforts to land the $1.8 billion FutureGen coal plant in Illinois, a project that has now been abandoned by the Department of Energy.

"I wouldn't want to speculate about a specific figure, but millions of dollars have been invested in our site," said Angela Griffin, president of Coles Together.

In Douglas County, the city of Tuscola and private businesses spent more than $300,000 trying to get FutureGen, said Brian Moody, executive director of Tuscola Economic Development, Inc.

"And that's not counting thousands of hours of donated labor by people from throughout our area," Moody said. "That's money we could have spent on attracting another economic project if we had known FutureGen was going to be abandoned."

Griffin said she isn't concerned about whether or not that money has been wasted, considering the Department of Energy's new course.

"We have brought the world's attention to Mattoon," Griffin said on Wednesday. Moody said that the Department of Energy should have let the competing communities know in advance about its concerns over the cost of FutureGen.

"The cost estimates have been out there for everyone to see," Moody said.

"There's no reason for the Department of Energy to restructure everything at this late date."

Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell said the Department of Energy came up with a restructuring plan in the last few days.

It was better to announce the change now, rather than waiting a year or two and then blaming the next White House administration.

"We decided to make the hard decision now ... so that we can ensure that this effort and the FutureGen project is successful," Sell said.

Sell said he doesn't anticipate problems finding energy companies to submit their ideas for clean-coal plants.

"I think there's a real commitment that exists today to proceed in moving forward in building these projects," he said.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson,R-Urbana, released a letter sent to him by Energy Secretary Sam Bodman dated Nov. 30, 2007, indicating that Bodman planned to proceed with the original FutureGen project as of that date.

"We are diligently working to complete the process and issue the Record of Decision in a time frame that supports FutureGen site selection by the end of December 2007," wrote Bodman in the letter.

All that had changed by Jan. 29 when he told the Illinois delegation he was restructuring the project.

Sell said on Wednesday the Department of Energy would not issue a record of decision.