WASHINGTON (KMOX News) -- A U.S. Senate commitee has given a glimmer of hope to the effort to bring the $1.5 billion FutureGen project to Mattoon, Illinois.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has included $134 million in an energy and water funding bill to protect the FutureGen project. The U.S. Department of Energy pulled its funding for the project after Mattoon beat Tuscola and two sites in Texas for the low-emissions coal plant.
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says the funding is the first step in saving the project.
"We're in pretty good shape to project this money," he says. "I think that it is likely that the Department of Energy got the message, and they're not going to try and move it or put it in some other spending mode."
Durbin says the appropriation makes it likely the next president will decide on the future of FutureGen.
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