GILLETTE - Gov. Dave Freudenthal said on Thursday he had no choice but to again deny a tax-exempt revenue bond request by Two Elk Power Generation Station Project. He explained that his office hadn't received requested information from the company before a deadline earlier this month.

Two Elk sought to transfer $213.5 million of its bonding to tax-exempt status.

"We told them we had a short amount of time to make a decision, and we just never heard from them," John Masterson, legal counsel to the governor, said in an interview Thursday afternoon.

Two Elk is a project of the Denver-based North American Power Group (NAPG). Attempts to reach the company for comment were unsuccessful.

For more than six years, NAPG has been trying to fund and build the 300-megawatt, coal-fired Two Elk power plant in southern Campbell County. The project qualifies for tax-exempt bonding because the power plant would burn "waste" coal - coal that usually isn't sold to utility power generators and is reburied in the mining process.

Construction of the plant would take about 2.5 years and employ up to 400 people at the peak of construction activity. Much of the workforce would be housed in the town of Wright.

Freudenthal denied another request a year ago. The company had suffered some serious blows to the project, having lost its main funding partner and an air quality permit for the power plant. NAPG vice president Daniel Yueh recently said those setbacks took the project off the market for a while and it took some time to get the project back on track.

Masterson said the governor is requesting the same information it requested from NAPG last year. The governor wants an itemized list of physical work that has already occurred on the plant, a construction schedule and "hard" evidence that turbines and boilers have been ordered for plant.

"We told them to feel free to re-apply," Masterson said. "We like the project. We think it can bring jobs, and you've got a western power grid that is interested in new projects. But we have to be satisfied that the project is viable and ongoing."

NAPG officials recently told Campbell County commissioners that the main permits for Two Elk are in place, including the air quality permit and a permit from the Industrial Siting Council. Also, the NAPG reported that it weeks close to sealing a deal with a major utility to buy power from the Two Elk plant.

Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 682-3388 or dzeffer@trib.com.