DM&E issue may determine next congressman
Could a DM&E hazardous waste spill be Rochester's Katrina?
by Leigh Pomeroy
The DM&E proposed expansion may well determine whether Minnesota's 1st Congressional District stays in Republican hands or goes back after 12 years to the Democrats. And the election itself may determine whether the project advances or withers on the vine of grand schemes.
GOP incumbent Gil Gutknecht has been sitting pretty since he was first elected during the 1994 Gingrich revolution. But this year not only does he have a strong challenger in Mankato high school teacher and former National Guardsman Tim Walz, but he also has a railroad issue to contend with.
For eight years the fledgling DM&E railroad has been attempting to get an ambitious plan together to upgrade its existing infrastructure and gain access to the low-sulfur coal in Wyoming's Powder River Basin to carry it to power plants in the Midwest. The Powder River Basin is already served by the Burlington Northern and the Union Pacific.
The DM&E proposal has received support primarily in rural areas where the railroad's contention that a much-needed upgrade allowing the DM&E to better serve local grain and commodity shippers plays well to agricultural interests. But it has faced opposition in communities like Pierre and Brookings, South Dakota, and Mankato, Winona and particularly Rochester, Minnesota.
Nearly all cities along the route have signed community partnership agreements with the railroad, some begrudgingly, but the City of Rochester, bolstered by Olmsted County, the Mayo Clinic and the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, don't want the coal trains coming through town.
The chief objection is that the rail line passes within blocks of the Mayo Clinic campus. The Mayo contends that a hazardous waste spill from a derailment or other accident would cripple the downtown area and the Clinic. During any weekday approximately 30-40,000 people are in the city center adjacent to the tracks, making an evacuation particularly difficult. Further, at any given time as many as 600 Mayo patients are in intensive care or surgery, or are otherwise incapacitated, and cannot be moved. Mayo spokespeople call this "Rochester's potential Katrina."
During this struggle Rep. Gutknecht has been straddling the fence between catering to the large agricultural interests supporting the railroad and trying to appease the Mayo and the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, both long-time supporters. Now with Walz running a strong grassroots campaign and nearly certain to win key cities in the district like Mankato, Austin, Albert Lea and Winona, Gutknecht has to maintain his traditional hometown base in order to hold onto his seat.
Just recently, Gutknecht has aligned himself with Sen. Coleman to (finally) try to pressure the Department of Transportation to come up with a mitigation plan for Rochester, but DM&E opponents say this is doing too little too late.
Meanwhile, DM&E CEO Kevin Schieffer claims that 55 of 56 communities along the rail line have signed community partnership agreements with the railroad in support of the expansion, the one remaining holdout being Rochester. That's not technically true, however, as Brookings' agreement has been suspended until a referendum is voted on this fall, and Mankato's, while signed by the city has not been countersigned by the railroad, apparently due to a disagreement over a city veto clause in the contract. (Blue Earth County, in which Mankato is located, has yet to draft an agreement with the railroad.)
Another wrinkle to the issue is that the city of Winona, from which the DM&E plans to offload its trains onto barges to cross the Mississippi River, also does not have an agreement with the railroad. That's because the DM&E's tracks stop five miles north in Minnesota City, while the Canadian Pacific (CP) owns the line from Minnesota City through Winona. Further, according to a Track the Truth spokesman, the CP doesn't have the port facilities to offload the amount of coal that the DM&E is planning to ship.
All this has resulted in a strange brew of century-old railroad laws, community rights, competing economic interests and old-fashioned porkbarrel politics. The saga has gone on for eight years already and won't end soon. But there's no doubt in many minds that it's impacting the 2006 congressional election in Minnesota's southern-most district, and that the result of that election — and the new makeup of Congress in January — will determine the proposed project's final outcome.
by Leigh Pomeroy
The DM&E proposed expansion may well determine whether Minnesota's 1st Congressional District stays in Republican hands or goes back after 12 years to the Democrats. And the election itself may determine whether the project advances or withers on the vine of grand schemes.
GOP incumbent Gil Gutknecht has been sitting pretty since he was first elected during the 1994 Gingrich revolution. But this year not only does he have a strong challenger in Mankato high school teacher and former National Guardsman Tim Walz, but he also has a railroad issue to contend with.
For eight years the fledgling DM&E railroad has been attempting to get an ambitious plan together to upgrade its existing infrastructure and gain access to the low-sulfur coal in Wyoming's Powder River Basin to carry it to power plants in the Midwest. The Powder River Basin is already served by the Burlington Northern and the Union Pacific.
The DM&E proposal has received support primarily in rural areas where the railroad's contention that a much-needed upgrade allowing the DM&E to better serve local grain and commodity shippers plays well to agricultural interests. But it has faced opposition in communities like Pierre and Brookings, South Dakota, and Mankato, Winona and particularly Rochester, Minnesota.
Nearly all cities along the route have signed community partnership agreements with the railroad, some begrudgingly, but the City of Rochester, bolstered by Olmsted County, the Mayo Clinic and the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, don't want the coal trains coming through town.
The chief objection is that the rail line passes within blocks of the Mayo Clinic campus. The Mayo contends that a hazardous waste spill from a derailment or other accident would cripple the downtown area and the Clinic. During any weekday approximately 30-40,000 people are in the city center adjacent to the tracks, making an evacuation particularly difficult. Further, at any given time as many as 600 Mayo patients are in intensive care or surgery, or are otherwise incapacitated, and cannot be moved. Mayo spokespeople call this "Rochester's potential Katrina."
During this struggle Rep. Gutknecht has been straddling the fence between catering to the large agricultural interests supporting the railroad and trying to appease the Mayo and the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, both long-time supporters. Now with Walz running a strong grassroots campaign and nearly certain to win key cities in the district like Mankato, Austin, Albert Lea and Winona, Gutknecht has to maintain his traditional hometown base in order to hold onto his seat.
Just recently, Gutknecht has aligned himself with Sen. Coleman to (finally) try to pressure the Department of Transportation to come up with a mitigation plan for Rochester, but DM&E opponents say this is doing too little too late.
Meanwhile, DM&E CEO Kevin Schieffer claims that 55 of 56 communities along the rail line have signed community partnership agreements with the railroad in support of the expansion, the one remaining holdout being Rochester. That's not technically true, however, as Brookings' agreement has been suspended until a referendum is voted on this fall, and Mankato's, while signed by the city has not been countersigned by the railroad, apparently due to a disagreement over a city veto clause in the contract. (Blue Earth County, in which Mankato is located, has yet to draft an agreement with the railroad.)
Another wrinkle to the issue is that the city of Winona, from which the DM&E plans to offload its trains onto barges to cross the Mississippi River, also does not have an agreement with the railroad. That's because the DM&E's tracks stop five miles north in Minnesota City, while the Canadian Pacific (CP) owns the line from Minnesota City through Winona. Further, according to a Track the Truth spokesman, the CP doesn't have the port facilities to offload the amount of coal that the DM&E is planning to ship.
All this has resulted in a strange brew of century-old railroad laws, community rights, competing economic interests and old-fashioned porkbarrel politics. The saga has gone on for eight years already and won't end soon. But there's no doubt in many minds that it's impacting the 2006 congressional election in Minnesota's southern-most district, and that the result of that election — and the new makeup of Congress in January — will determine the proposed project's final outcome.
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