The U.S. Treasury Department plans to demand back more than $5 million it granted a Montana power plant that later filed for bankruptcy, in what would be a rare foray by the government into the courts to claw back job-creation funds distributed under the 2009 economic-stimulus package, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Treasury Department said that it plans to use the bankruptcy process to recover funds from Thompson River Power LLC. The Treasury paid Thompson River $6.5 million in 2010 from a piece of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act known as Section 1603 that reimbursed developers of renewable energy with cash payments equivalent to 30 percent of their projects' costs. The program has given out more than $11 billion, the Treasury Department said. The grant to Thompson River, majority-owned by a Minnesota private-equity firm, was to convert a coal-fired plant to burn wood, which is considered a "renewable" power source. But since receiving the money, the plant never operated either as a coal- or wood-burning plant, according to Montana regulators, and has produced neither power nor new jobs. On July 3, Thompson River filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy, and has listed $26 million in assets and $6.6 million in liabilities.
