Coal-to-gas plant supporters challenge activist approximation of cost to public

CHICAGO | Officials with the group that wants expansion of a coal gasification plant on the city’s Southeast Side are challenging the estimates offered by critics about how much such a plan would cost taxpayers.

Hoyt Hudson, project manager with the Chicago Clean Energy group, said Thursday the concept is required to give for cost savings to the public.

The purpose of the plant is to change coal and petroleum coke into a usual gas substitute that can be used in a variety of ways including creating electricity.

Hudson said that over the 30-year life of the contracts by utility companies to buy power from the proposed plant, there would be at least $100 million in such savings to the public.

That goes counter to claims by a occupant who said at an Illinois business Commission hearing Wednesday that development of the plant would result in incentives that would cost Illinois taxpayers $1,000 per person per year.

“That is an overstatement we powerfully challenge,” Hudson said.

The group also challenged ecological activists saying they have comments from 6,000 people in opposition to the project. While activists Wednesday said a important number of those people lived on Chicago’s Southeast Side, Hudson said he believes many live exterior of Illinois.

“It is part of a Sierra Club operation against all coal projects,” Hudson said.

Supporters of the Leucadia plant, to be built at the former site of state Steel, at 119th Street and Avenue O, argue jobs would be created. They also argue environmental activists overstate the potential for pollution from such a plant.

Activists contend the plant would cause contamination for an already heavily tainted part of Chicago, and they cite the state’s Millennium Reserve proposal that is destined to bolster the natural wetlands in the area for possible leisure use.

Hudson said the plan dictates how housing, environmental and manufacturing interests can co-exist around Lake Calumet and the Calumet River.

“We are in fulfillment with the goals of the Millennium Reserve,” he said.