Illinois town lands FutureGen 'clean' coal power plant
MATTOON, Ill. -- Residents celebrated when this central Illinois city was chosen Tuesday as the site of a futuristic power plant that would burn coal without emitting global warming gases, then got to work figuring out what comes next.
The $1.8 billion plant known as FutureGen, which would store carbon dioxide deep underground, is expected to bring hundreds of jobs and will be built on several hundred acres. Mattoon, a town of about 18,000, was chosen over nearby Tuscola and two Texas towns, Jewett and Penwell.
But hours after the announcement, the U.S. Department of Energy warned that projected cost overruns involving the plant "require a reassessment of FutureGen's design. The FutureGen Alliance, a consortium of 12 U.S. and foreign energy companies, announced the site against the advice of the DOE, which had said it was not yet ready to sign off on a site.
The private-government project, with the three-fourths of the cost coming from taxpayers, has been under increasing scrutiny in Congress. Some lawmakers have questioned its soaring cost -- nearly double the $950 million originally projected -- and its long delays.
"DOE believes that the public interest mandates that FutureGen deliver the greatest possible technological benefits in the most cost-efficient manner. This will require restructuring FutureGen to maximize the role of private sector innovation, facilitate the most productive public-private partnership, and prevent further cost escalation," James Slutz, the DOE's acting principal deputy assistant secretary, said Tuesday in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, a standing-room-only crowd that gathered in the former Times Theater to watch the announcement on a big screen erupted in a roar when Mattoon was announced as the winner. People raised their hands in the air, exchanged high-fives and some began to cry.
"I brought two speeches today for two possible outcomes and this is what I'm going to do with one of them," said a teary-eyed Angela Griffin, president of the Coles County economic development group, as she held a consolation speech in the air and ripped it to pieces.
"Game over," she said.
Griffin later said she wasn't sure what the Energy Department's latest statement on FutureGen meant, but doesn't believe it will jeopardize the project or Mattoon's place in it.
"I don't know how to read that except DOE is covering all of its bureaucratic bases," she said. "I'm not alarmed, I'm not concerned. I think they'll work it out."
FutureGen Alliance spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said that the DOE in March, "signed off on the very costs estimates that they're now expressing concern over," and called the statement "a little baffling."
"Restructuring the FutureGen facility and the program would only add years of delay and more costs," Pacheco said. "So the alliance is eager to find out what the DOE has in mind, but in the meantime it will continue to honor its agreements with the DOE and move the project forward."
Griffin said representatives from the FutureGen Alliance would be in Mattoon Wednesday to begin seismic surveys of 16 square miles of land. Officials have said the plant is expected to be operating by 2012, and said Tuesday that they hope to begin construction by July 2009.
Meanwhile, city officials say they must determine how to get water to the site, build a road that can handle heavy construction equipment and hire a city planner. City attorney Preston Owen said they'll even examine their subdivision code to see if the city is prepared to handle an influx of new housing construction.
FutureGen Chief Executive Michael Mudd said Mattoon was chosen because of its "very good" water resources and geologic conditions and because carbon dioxide could be injected underground directly at the site, possibly simplifying construction.