FutureGen Team Impressed with Anderson County Site

By MEGAN MIDDLETON And CINDY BROWN, Staff Writers
February 01, 2006 — Tyler Morning Telegraph

PALESTINE — The FutureGen Texas Team on Wednesday toured, by ground and by helicopter, the proposed site in Anderson County for what could be the world's first near-zero emissions power plant.

The East Texas Council of Governments selected the Palestine-Anderson County site, out of several proposals, to submit to FutureGen Texas for consideration after the state announced it would allow each council of governments to present one site in its region as a possible candidate for the FutureGen project.

Nine sites were recommended to FutureGen Texas by the interested councils of governments. All nine sites are being visited.

Palestine-Anderson County was the fourth visit for the team.

"Something called FutureGen needs to look like it's power for the future. This has a nice clean look and feel to it," Dr. Scott Tinker, head of the FutureGen Texas Team, said of the Palestine-Anderson County site after touring it. "It looks like the complete package is here. It's going to take some work to get it nailed down, but there are no holes."

After its visit to Palestine, the FutureGen Texas Team split up and conducted shorter visits to cities in other areas in East Texas that had also submitted proposals to the East Texas Council of Governments, including Henderson County, Smith/Cherokee counties, Harrison County and Rusk County.

Chuck McDonald, a spokesman for FutureGen Texas, said that "the focus of our visit was Palestine" but that the team members wanted to touch base with the other communities and let them show them what they had put together as well.

FutureGen is a $1 billion U.S. Department of Energy demonstration project to create the world's first 275-megawatt energy facility that will produce electricity and hydrogen from coal with near-zero emissions. It will also be capable of sequestering carbon dioxide.

Tinker said they expect to receive the request for proposals from the DOE and the FutureGen Industrial Alliance sometime in February and hope to have a Texas site selected shortly thereafter.

Before the team's ground and helicopter tour of the Palestine-Anderson County site, members listened to a presentation from Palestine officials about the site's features.

The proposed site is about seven miles east of Palestine and about 1.5 miles off of U.S. Highway 79. It is the former site of the Alcoa aluminum plant and at one point was the planned location of a gas and electric company.

Officials touted the rail capabilities at the site, that the site is fully developed which could cut down on the time and cost of the project, that electrical transmission lines are in place, the commitment of 2 billion gallons of water a year from the city of Palestine, the existing sewer plant with detention ponds at the site, three U.S. highways that run through Palestine as well as two Texas highways, and local support for the project.

"We're just so excited about it," Palestine Economic Development Corporation President Fred Richardson told the team." Palestine and Anderson County does have all of the attributes that have been set ... forth in your request ... By choosing Palestine and Anderson County, you can bring this project to quick fruition."

During the presentation at the University of Texas at Tyler's Palestine campus, the team also heard from James Nelson, chairman of the civil and environmental engineering department at UT Tyler, via videoconference. Nelson said the university is excited about playing a role with FutureGen.

They also heard from Dr. Tom Temples of the University of South Carolina who spoke about the geological factors involved in the proposal. He spoke about taking advantage of salt domes to store carbon dioxide, which team members later noted as being a unique part of the Palestine-Anderson County proposal.

State Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, welcomed the Future-Gen Texas Team Wednesday morning and listened to the presentation, as did State Rep. Chuck Hopson, D-Jacksonville.

"I assure you the team that has developed this proposal has done an extremely thorough job, one that I think will make Texans proud," Staples said. "This region of the state has proven time and time again to deliver on tough, important issues and will be the kind of partner that I think will make your job easier. We know that this is vitally important to our state."

The ETCOG executive committee voted Dec. 16 to approve Palestine-Anderson County as the council's proposed site for the FutureGen project, following a recommendation the day before by a site selection committee the council established.

Other councils submitting proposals for state review were the Brazos Valley Council of Governments, Alamo Area Council of Governments, Deep East Texas Council of Governments, Heart of Texas Council of Governments, Houston-Galveston Council of Governments, Middle Rio Grande Development Council, Nortex Regional Planning Commission and Permian Basin Regional Planning Commission.

"Our charge is to find the best site in Texas," Tinker said.

He said the Palestine-Ander-son County presentation was a "tremendous proposal."

He and the other FutureGen Texas members did, however, offer suggestions to Palestine officials on ways to enhance the proposal. Some suggestions included reaching out to officials at Eastman Chemical Co. in Longview and emphasizing the accessibility of the site by showing how NASA researchers from around the world come to Palestine to work at the National Scientific Balloon Facility. They also addressed other issues related to assessing the rail equipment on site and firming up commitments and other information.

Tinker said later that the obvious assets of the Palestine-Anderson County proposal included access to several kinds of coal, infrastructure to bring the coal to the site, facilities to take the power, "good places" to put the carbon dioxide, and potential candidates for the off-takes.

"That's all outstanding," he said. He also cited the community interest and the existing infrastructure.

He said, though, that one of the main issues may be having easy access for a national and international community to reach the site.

He said each of the sites that submitted proposals was valid and had something worth proposing.

"All of them have some real strong points," Tinker said.

FutureGen Texas is a collaboration of the Bureau of Economic Geology of the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin and the Governor's Clean Coal Technology Council of the Railroad Commission of Texas.

The six members of the FutureGen Texas Team who visited Palestine on Wednesday were Dr. Ian Duncan, Dr. Gerald Hill, Jay Kipper, Steve Walden, Tinker and McDonald.

Palestine officials were pleased with the visit.

"I thought everything went exceptionally well," Brian Malone, Palestine Economic Development Corporation executive director said. "We accomplished what we wanted to in the presentation. We really appreciate their feedback to us."

OTHER VISITS

Members of the FutureGen Texas Team later met with Henderson County officials at a luncheon on Wednesday at the Athens Country Club. Chip Perryman, an energy finance professional, presented Henderson County's original FutureGen proposal to the team members. This was the same proposal the county presented to the East Texas Council of Governments in December.

Henderson County officials are still hopeful that members of FutureGen Texas will decide to use their county in the state's proposal, which will be sent to the Department of Energy for final consideration. Although ETCOG has already chosen Palestine-Anderson County to compete for the Texas state proposal, Perryman said Henderson County would be a more ideal location to host FutureGen because of several factors. These include its favorable location to coal deposits, a railway, highways, bodies of water, and old oil pipelines. Perryman said these factors make Henderson County more economical.

"You cannot burn any of that billion dollars on infrastructure," Perryman said. "It all has to be right there."

Perryman said in his presentation that Anderson County plans to use coal imported from Henderson County if it is selected for the experiment.

Tinker said the FutureGen Texas team has visited five possible sites throughout Texas in the past two weeks and will take another week to visit the other counties that turned in proposals.

"We could probably see half a dozen or a dozen FutureGen sites in Texas that are not part of the experimental program...If I come back in 10 years, I'd like to see a facility at each of the sites (that turned in proposals)," Tinker said.

Greg Junek is Business editor. He can be reached at 903.596.6280. e-mail: business@tylerpaper.com

Megan Middleton covers Gregg and Anderson counties. She can be reached at 903.596.6287. e-mail: news@tylerpaper.com

Cindy Brown covers Van Zandt and Henderson Counties. She can be reached at 903.596.6267 e-mail: news@tylerpaper.com

SITE VISIT: Fred Richardson (right), president of the Palestine Economic Development Corporation, talks with members of the FutureGen Texas Team on Wednesday at Palestine and Anderson County’s proposed site off U.S. Highway 79. (Staff Photo By Megan Midd)