Johnson Calls for House Investigation of FutureGen Change

U.S. House Rep. Tim Johnson (R-Urbana) said he would discourage communities in his district from further involvement in the FutureGen project.

Johnson railed against the Department of Energy after it re-worked the coal-burning power plant project, ditching plans for a new plant in Matoon and instead calling to retrofit an existing one in Meredosia.

The change infuriated Johnson, who said Coles County leaders spent millions of dollars to bring the original FutureGen to Mattoon. The Energy Department said it changed course because technology that would have been used at a new power plant in Mattoon was already being used elsewhere. Mattoon withdrew from the project when it learned it would no longer host the FutureGen power plant.

Now, the FutureGen Alliance is looking for a community to host an underground storage site for the plant's carbon dioxide emissions. Johnson said the initial winner of the project -- Mattoon - was cheated out of FutureGen because of the change, and he said communities bidding for the storage site should not get too excited.

"They want to pursue it, I'll help them," Johnson said. "But they ought to be advised that the history of this project has been an absolute disaster from the Bush administration to the Obama administration."

He added that he does not think FutureGen 2.0 will become a reality, saying if it does happen "most communities wouldn't want it."

On Tuesday, the Republican asked a House panel to look into why the new plans for the project did not include a coal-fired power plant in Mattoon, suggesting pay-to-play politics was behind the decision. He argued that an Energy Department official assigned to clean-coal projects is the former head of a firm that was chosen to work on the reconfigured FutureGen.

A spokesman for U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said politics appears to be behind Congressman Johnson's call for a review of changes to the FutureGen coal-fired power plant. Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker said he wants to know why the Congressman would raise these questions three weeks before an election.

"It certainly raises the question whether he's doing this to get his name in the paper or on the radio, " Shoemaker said. "I don't think this is a serious attempt to get questions answered."

Shoemaker said Johnson has asked questions about the FutureGen project before. Yet, when given the opportunity to meet with the Department of Energy, Shoemaker claimed Johnson refused to meet with the agency's officials.

Johnson shot back, questioning Durbin's own intentions.

"Senator Durbin is the very individual who pulled the plug together with the Department of Energy on a community who had their collective lifeblood in this issue," he said.

FutureGen plans to announce the site of the storage space in early 2011.