Railroad Expansion Makes Mayo Clinic Cross

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

And I'm Michele Norris.

The world-famous Mayo Clinic is involved in a bitter battle with, of all things, a railroad. A small, South Dakota railroad wants to increase traffic on tracks that go past the clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The clinic says that could put patients' lives at risk.

As NPR's Peter Overby reports, part of the fight is taking place in Washington, D.C., where some powerful players are involved.

(Soundbite of train horn)

PETER OVERBY reporting:

The Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern coal trains go through Rochester at only 10 or 15 miles an hour, like this one the other night. 65 cars crossing Broadway, just a couple of blocks from the Mayo Clinic's sprawling campus.

Kevin Schieffer is president of the railroad. His plan is to make it America's first new major railroad in more than a century, to do it by extending the line west and hauling coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

Mr. KEVIN SCHIEFFER (Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad): This isn't about one community, it's about the entire country, and it's about a very significant and compelling national need.

OVERBY: The need for more energy. DM&E wants to run mile-long coal trains at 50 miles an hour through downtown Rochester. But the railroad has had safety problems. Right now it's one of just three lines getting special scrutiny from the Federal Railroad Administration. That's made anxieties spike at the Mayo Clinic, which treats some 1.5 million patients per year.

The railroad and the hospital have been fighting for eight years now. They're fighting in Washington because the railroad needs federal approval and money to expand into coal country. Schieffer wants to borrow $2.5 billion from the government as seed money.

The Mayo Clinic recently held a Washington press conference. Speakers described a threat. A train derails in Rochester, carrying the fertilizer ingredient anhydrous ammonia. A tank car ruptures. The poisonous cloud would spread so quickly the clinic wouldn't be able to evacuate its 2,000 beds. Dr. Glenn Forbes, the CEO at Mayo-Rochester.

Dr. GLENN FORBES (Mayo Clinic, Rochester): I return home tonight, where I am facing thousands of our nurses, aides, workers, anesthetists, physicians, members of the community, who are asking and waiting to hear are their lives and their patients' being placed in danger?

OVERBY: The answer to that is no, according to the Federal Surface Transportation Board. It approved the railroad's expansion plan, and it was upheld in the first round of a court battle. But that raises the question -what about private financing? Frank Wilner is a transportation economist.

Mr. FRANK WILNER (Transportation economist): There's no reason why private investors shouldn't be lined up to lend the DM&E the money it needs, but it's obvious that the private sector is not willing to do so.

OVERBY: Schieffer, the head of the railroad, blames Mayo and other objectors.

Mr. SCHIEFFER: The name of the game in any project of consequence is delay, delay, delay.

OVERBY: So Schieffer, a former Republican Senate staffer, looked to Capitol Hill. He hired a Congressman turned lobbyist, South Dakota Republican John Thune. Schieffer paid Thune $60,000 in 2003. In 2004, when Thune was lobbying and running for Senate, Schieffer paid him $160,000. Thune won the election, and less than a year later, Senator Thune did what lobbyist Thune had been pushing for. As the Senate was assembling a 1,300-page transportation bill, Thune added a provision that boosted funding for federal railroad loans ten-fold. He also changed loan standards in ways that worked to DM&E's advantage.

Thune, interviewed just off the Senate floor, says he's been promoting railroads since he was the state railroad director, 15 years ago.

Senator JOHN THUNE (Republican, South Dakota): I don't view it as being anything out of the ordinary, and the fact that I did some work while I was out of government in support of the DM&E railroad and its expansion, I think, is just part of an ongoing effort.

OVERBY: Schieffer says the government wants to see a business plan just as private investors would.

Mr. SCHIEFFER: This isn't the field of dreams. It isn't a build it and we hope they will come.

OVERBY: And he sees an irony in Mayo's ferocious opposition.

Mr. SCHIEFFER: The single biggest user of coal today that we deliver is the Mayo Clinic. They have absolutely no problem with that going through 50 other cities to get there.

OVERBY: Just as Schieffer got help from Senator Thune, Mayo has its own political connections. One of its trustees is former Democratic leader Tom Daschle, the man Thune unseated in 2004, still influential in Washington. Former South Dakota Governor and Congressman Bill Janklow is a Mayo consultant. The Federal Railroad Administration may act on the loan by year's end. But with their lobbyists and lawyers ready, neither side is likely to call that the end of the line.

Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.