The U.S. Department of Energy informed the group, set up to bring the billion-dollar clean coal power plant into reality, that its contract with the government ends Sunday.

The energy department pulled the plug on FutureGen earlier this year, raising ire among Illinois officials who had fought to get the project since 2003. Mattoon was named the destination for FutureGen in late 2007. Illinois and Texas were both finalists for the project. U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Belleville said he is still suspicious of why the Bush administration suddenly lost interest in the project.

"I will say again that I do not believe we would be at this point today if the FutureGen Alliance had chosen a site in Texas," Costello said. "Our nation's energy needs and our economic future are too important for five years' worth of progress to simply be discarded."

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, criticized energy secretary Samuel Bodman for the timing of the contract termination, when Mattoon and other communities in Coles County were dealing with flooding.

In a May hearing, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman could not tell a U.S. Senate subcommittee why the projected cost of the Mattoon facility jumped from $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2005 to $1.8 billion in fiscal year 2007.

"I don't know the answers to that," Bodman replied.

When Durbin asked whether Bodman thought the energy secretary should know that much before making a decision to scrap a project, Bodman told the Senate's second-highest ranking Democrat: "No. I don't think so."

Energy officials in May said they plan to spend up to $1.3 billion at several clean-coal power plants across the country instead of solely in Mattoon.

- The Associated Press contributed to this report.