(The Associated Press circulated the following article on December 5.)
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters stepped into the 9-year-old debate over the expansion of the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad on Monday, visiting railroad headquarters and the city where opposition is strongest.
Peters came on a “listen and learn” tour to acquaint herself with the dispute. The DM&E is seeking a $2.3 billion loan from the Transportation Department’s Federal Railroad Administration to finance an upgrade that Rochester opposes over safety concerns. The railroad has already secured federal regulatory approval.
The transportation secretary, who assumed her post just in September, met for about 90 minutes on Monday morning at DM&E headquarters in Sioux Falls, S.D., with DM&E President and CEO Kevin Schieffer, U.S. Sen. John Thune, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds and other officials to hear the case in favor for the railroad’s expansion.
Thune said he, Rounds and people from the state’s other congressional offices encouraged Peters to decide on the project based on its merits and not emotion and politics.
“That was pretty much the essence of the message — don’t make this based on who’s making the most noise or emotion surrounding it,” he said.
Peters followed that with an hour-long afternoon meeting in Rochester at a retirement high-rise one block from the DM&E tracks with U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Rep.-elect Tim Walz, and officials from the Mayo Clinic and local government.
The Mayo Clinic and Rochester oppose the $6 billion project, arguing the increased high-speed train traffic through the city could threaten the safety of patients at the clinic, which lies a few hundred yards from the tracks. The project would rebuild 600 miles of track across South Dakota and Minnesota and add 260 miles of new track to reach Wyoming’s Powder River Basin coal mines. Both sides gave Peters documents making conflicting claims about the DM&E’s safety record.
Peters left Rochester quickly after her meeting, giving no insight into what she might do. There was no stated timetable for Peters to take her next steps.
Coleman said Peters wants to digest what she learned Monday.
“There will be another step,” Coleman said. “I asked her to go back and process a mitigation program that makes sense.”
Coleman said that means a package that would protect the Mayo Clinic but that is still acceptable to the DM&E. And he said that if he sees progress, he would back away from his earlier threat to try to kill the project if there’s no solution by year’s end.
The impasse between Rochester and the DM&E is simply too deep for the parties to negotiate themselves out of it, he said.
“I am satisfied the secretary is fully engaged,” he said. “If she wants a few more weeks, I’ll give her that.”
Chris Gade, a spokesman for the Rochester Coalition, said the DM&E’s proposal as it currently stands is a threat both to the community and U.S. taxpayers. The group argues that the DM&E won’t be able to repay the $2.3 billion loan, a charge the railroad disputes.
“The direct involvement of the nation’s top transportation officials is very encouraging and a sign that this project may get the level of scrutiny it deserves,” Gade said.
Thune, who was the DM&E’s chief lobbyist before he was elected to the Senate in 2004, said the initial application for the project was made in February 1998. He said the railroad has offered three mitigation plans that were all rejected.
“So it’s now almost nine years that this project has been scrutinized and analyzed and litigated and everything else,” he said. “Now is kind of critical time. If it’s going to move forward, it needs to move forward.”