The Southern Illinoisan Editorial Board

There are times when it's best to accept defeat gracefully and move to the next contest.

It's the mark of a professional in most fields - whether it occurs on the striped green fields of the National Football League, or among the polished wood and heavy draperies of a formal courtroom, or in the cold steel and glass environs of a corporate office.

This isn't one of those times. The people of Illinois, especially those in Southern and Central Illinois, were expected to swallow bitter medicine when the U.S. Department of Energy scuttled the $1.8 billion FutureGen project slated for construction in Mattoon.

The project was seen as a first step in developing a market for our region's ample stores of bituminous coal and as a model for a new generation of power plants that might be developed globally.

Those hopes still exist, if only barely, but it is essential that we continue the political fight seeking a restoration of the FutureGen project. In that effort, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin is emerging as perhaps our most powerful ally, a national figure with enough clout to keep FutureGen hopes alive until a new presidential administration takes office in Washington.

The Democrat said recently he would hold up all Department of Energy Senate confirmations until the agency agrees to extend its contract with the FutureGen Alliance. Durbin told U.S. Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman in a letter last week the state "firmly rejects" the position taken by the Bush administration on a power plant prototype that would safely pump emissions into underground storage, not into the atmosphere.

In his visit to Southern Illinois on Wednesday, Durbin reaffirmed his support for FutureGen and predicted it would remain supported by the candidate he believes will be our next president - U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.

"I haven't given up on FutureGen," Durbin told members of The Southern Illinoisan's editorial board. Durbin said about $134 million of the $1.8 billion needed for the project is still available in the budget of the Department of Energy.

Although there are reports of a similar project being developed by the Chinese, Durbin said the U.S. needs to remain involved in the development of FutureGen and its so-called "clean coal" technologies.

"As we develop the technologies, we have the potential for more jobs and more manufacturing in the United States," Durbin explained.

Durbin stopped short of directly accusing the Bush administration of losing interest in FutureGen because it was awarded to an Illinois site instead of a competing location in the president's home state of Texas. But he admitted to cynical suspicions about the sudden loss of interest in FutureGen - a project that once was launched and lauded by the federal government.

People in this region share those suspicions, Sen. Durbin. We appreciate your help in the fight for FutureGen. Keep it up.