GILBERTON — John W. Rich Jr. was in a very good mood on Tuesday and deservedly so. Only the evening before he received word that his vision to turn coal wastes into clean transportation fuel will receive a $100 million federal grant to help finance the proposed $612 million project.

The president of Waste Management and Processors Inc. (WMPI) and Reading Anthracite Company, Rich will add the $100 million to the $47 million allocated by the state in 2002 for the project. The next step will be to find private investors to raise the $465 million still needed to build the state-of-the-art processing facility, the first of its kind in the United States.

For Rich, the federal grant is one more step in a project envisioned about 10 years ago. During those years, the idea grew and gathered momentum, slowly changing from a dream to a very possible reality as technologies developed.

Once the plant is up and running, it will covert 4,711 tons of anthracite culm into more than 5,000 barrels of ultraclean fuels and 41 megawatts of power per day. The project will also create 1,000 construction jobs and 150 permanent operating jobs with an annual payroll of $4.5 million. Economic studies project an additional 600 ancillary jobs from the plant.

Speaking from an office in the Gilberton Coal Co. headquarters, Rich said he received word of the grant from U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., about 5:30 p.m. Monday. The WMPI application asking for $100 was among 36 applications from around the country. The projects totaled more $5 billion, with the total requested in government funding at $1.4 billion. There was only $330 million allocated by Congress to the U.S. Department of Energy for the Clean Coal Power Initiative for the first round of funding. The Schuylkill County project was the first grant announced and makes up almost one-third of the annual budgeted funding.

“We’re at the head of the class,” said Rich, with plenty of enthusiasm. “I don’t think they told the other winners yet, either. We got the notice first. We were hanging by our thumbs here because the date we had to finalize everything was Jan. 8, so we’ve been waiting for five days wondering what the outcome was.”

He was extremely grateful for the help received in procuring the grant, mentioning Santorum, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, state Rep. Bob Allen, Congressman Tim Holden, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and President George W. Bush and others for their support.

“We still have to finalize the financing and that’s going to take the rest of this year,” Rich said. “Once the contractual arrangements are in order, we should be breaking ground in the spring of 2004.”

While it’s mighty handy to have $147 million in start-up money in the bank, there still remains $465 million that needs to be raised in the private sector. Trying to raise almost a half-billion dollars in a skittish investment market will be a challenge.

“The Wall Street people won’t even consider financing something like this because it’s the first plant of its type,” he explained. “It’s the first of its kind where we’re marrying two established technologies.”

Rich said that once the plant is built and operating, and people can see its potential, similar projects that follow around the country will have an easier time in securing financing.

“Now, when they’ll be something to look at, then everyone is going to want to get in the action,” Rich said. “There will be more competition and there will be more coal-oil facilities. My prediction is that it will drive down the price over time for liquid transportation fuels.”

Rich said there are several other proposed projects on the grant application list that show gasification projects, but only this one is designed to convert coal to fuel.

The gasification plant will be located east of the John B. Rich Memorial Cogeneration Plant near Morea and will take up about 40 acres. Rich said a specific site has not been selected, but the engineering design is basically completed.

“We have a basic design package. The sizes, the equipment list, the process flow diagrams, it’s all been configured,” he said. “It’s well beyond the conceptual phase. It’s all been integrated by our technical advisors out in the west coast (Nexant Inc., San Francisco). We have the technical people from South Africa collaborating on all of this. There’s Shell, Chevron, Texaco.”