ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The senior U.S. senators from Illinois and Missouri pressed anew Monday for the Energy Department to hold off on its already announced plans to scuttle its deal with an alliance of big power and coal companies to build a nearly emissions-free power plant.Sens. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican, urged Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman in a letter to continue funding the project known as FutureGen into March of next year, allowing the next president to consider its fate.
The deal between the Energy Department and the coalition of roughly a dozen energy companies -- which includes major utilities such as American Electric Power and Southern Company and coal producers like Peabody Energy and Consol Energy Inc. -- is to expire June 15, when the DOE can legally cancel the contract.
FutureGen's developers in December tapped Mattoon, Ill. -- in Durbin's home state -- as the site for FutureGen, under which carbon dioxide from the planned coal-fired power plant would be trapped and permanently stored underground.
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