Illinois Expansions at a Glance General Mills is hiring up to 100 new workers as it expands production capacity at its Green Giant plant in Belvidere. The company is adding more packaging lines at the 400,000-sq.-ft. (37,200-sq.-m.) facility. The plant already employs 400, and the new workers will be added to all three shifts.         Prairie Packaging, a manufacturer of disposable plastic dinnerware, will enlarge capacity at its Bedford Park facility with a $10-million investment, creating 100 jobs.         Champion Laboratories, a major manufacturer of automobile and commercial filters, is expanding its Albion facility to add new manufacturing lines and modernize. Before electing to stay put and expand, Champion looked at alternative sites in South Carolina and Mexico.         Systrand Manufacturing Corp. and Krupp Hoesch Automotive of America plan a joint venture in Danville in a new 80,000-sq.-ft. (7,400-sq.-m.) facility, creating 50 jobs within the first three years of operation. The joint venture, Systrand Presta Engine Systems, will grind and polish camshaft blanks supplied by ThyssenKrupp Gerlach Co.'s Presta Divison. The products will then be sent ready-to-install to auto manufacturers. The new company is next to the existing ThyssenKrupp Gerlach facility. Systrand Presta chose Danville after looking at several sites in the Midwest. Production is set to begin in early 2004.

Energy Campus Tops Investment List

Backing up Blagojevich's support for coal-fired electrical plants is the fact that Illinois has an estimated 30 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, about one-eighth of the U.S. total. The state's coal reserves contain more Btu than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and the state ranks seventh among coal producing states. In fact, coal underlies a full 37,000 square miles (95,830 sq. km.) of Illinois – about 65 percent of the state's surface.

Peabody Energy is in the permitting stage of its Prairie State Energy Campus in Washington County. Plans call for the $1-billion facility to be operational in 2008.

        An example of the type of energy projects Blagojevich champions is Peabody Energy's planned Prairie State Energy Campus in Lively Grove in Washington County. The $1-billion, 1,500 megawatt coal-fueled electricity generation plant is currently winding its way through the permitting process. Plans call for the plant, which will employ 450, to begin operation in 2008.