News

2006 news releases

Statement on FutureGen by Ohio Air Quality Development Authority
Executive Director Mark R. Shanahan

“Earlier today, I received two emails from the FutureGen Industrial Alliance summarizing the reasons why Ohio’s two sites were not selected as finalists for FutureGen.  Our Meigs County site was disqualified for not meeting two of the qualifying criteria, while our Tuscarawas County site apparently received relatively low scores in several categories.

“These brief explanations raised a number of questions for us, and we hope to answer them through a more thorough debriefing from the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, as well as with our proposal team.

“Ohio’s two FutureGen proposals were prepared by a world-class engineering firm – WorleyParsons.  As we prepared the Meigs County proposal, we received no indication that our site did not meet two of the qualifying criteria.  With respect to the Tuscarawas County site, we understood that we had several issues requiring mitigation.  No single site is a perfect one.  However, we were in agreement that we sufficiently addressed those issues.  It seems clear that our WorleyParsons team evaluated the criteria in question differently than the FutureGen Industrial Alliance.

“We look forward to a dialogue with WorleyParsons to better understand the Alliance evaluation of our sites.  And we have already requested a debriefing from Alliance staff at the earliest possible convenience.  We hope to have more to report on this matter in the near future.

“We remain confident that Ohio submitted two very stron.g proposals in an intense competition that Ohio could not afford to ignore.  We are grateful to all the local communities for their dedication to this effort.”

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Attachments: E-mails from the FutureGen Alliance regarding Ohio's proposed sites in Meigs and Tuscarawas counties