Hunting for $1 billion of stimulus spending in rural Illinois.

MATTOON, Ill.—We had come from afar to look for the treasure of Mattoon. For years, it's been rumored that the government would help build a clean coal plant here. It was to be called FutureGen but has taken so long to get here that it's jokingly called NeverGen. It was the great hope that this prototypical small Midwestern town (population 17,177 in 2008) has always been searching for but could never find.

And then the stimulus happened. A few weeks ago, the Department of Energy announced a $1 billion investment in FutureGen, providing an expensive vote of confidence for the consortium of coal companies that will build the plant. The money is coming out of the DoE's $7.15 billion stimulus allotment, but the investment is more remarkable for its meaning than its size. It's the Obama administration's clarion example that it does support clean coal (a longtime campaign promise). It believes what most environmental activists do not—that clean coal can be clean.

So we drove into Mattoon to see what FutureGen—or the empty field it would soon inhabit—would look like and what it would mean for this town. There were only two problems: We had no idea where it was. And neither did the people of Mattoon.

As my photographer, Dave, and I rolled through town on a brilliant Thursday afternoon, we were hoping to see a roadside sign pointing the way: "<--City hall; <--Amtrak; $1 billion stimulus project -->." But no. We were treated to a quiet town among the flat fields of eastern Illinois. There were neighborhoods of rundown houses whose paint seemed ready to blow off in our car's wake; posh blocks of two-story homes that looked as out of place as their cobblestone street; local businesses threatened by the Wal-Mart (WMT) placed at the edge of town.

Thwarted by the lack of signage, we turned to the locals. Before we came, I had checked out the clean coal lobby's materials on Mattoon, and it made it seem like the entire town had a welcome mat rolled out for FutureGen. If it was the talk of the town, people must know where it is.