Today's Argus Leader reports on the big new railroad ("largest construction project in South Dakota's history and the biggest rail expansion in a century") for SD that Senator Thune has been working on:
The railroad's chief executive officer, Kevin Schieffer, will travel around the state today unveiling plans to pursue a federal loan to cover the cost of the project. That money is from a program that Sen. John Thune had amended to be tailored to the railroads' needs. That means the prospects of getting the money are bright.
Schieffer and Thune say the railroad is uniquely qualified to secure such a loan because its plan to haul coal from Wyoming to midwestern and eastern coal-fired utilities fits the nation's energy priorities.
The possibility of the huge federal loan came about only after Thune was able to get new provisions the railroad needed into the $286.4 billion transportation bill that Congress passed last summer and President Bush signed into law in August.
"To a huge extent, this was his initiative. He knew what we were trying to do and spotted the opportunity," Schieffer said of Thune. ...
The project will bring several thousand construction jobs to the affected states and will add about 2,000 permanent DM&E jobs to a railroad that currently employs about 350, Schieffer said.
Many of those jobs will be in Huron, which is struggling with economic development and has supported the project from the beginning while other communities opposed it. Huron will be the site of a new operations center, Schieffer said, where cars and locomotives will be serviced and fueled. Other centers will be near Wall, the Wyoming border and New Ulm, Minn. The exact locations of those have not been decided, Schieffer said. However, "Huron is not subject to change." ...
Thune said the resistance was there early on. "But I just think what it means to have a $2.5 billion investment in your state. It dwarfs anything we've ever seen in the state of South Dakota," he said.
So, in some combination of mutual thinking, Schieffer and Thune determined what would be needed for the DM&E to get another railroad administration loan for the coal train project.
Previous transportation bills carried railroad titles, Thune says, and he looked at the bill Congress was putting together last year as a possible vehicle for the changes DM&E sought that would make them eligible for the loan and for the loan to work for them.
He brought proposals to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who led the appropriate subcommittee, and after the changes became part of the Senate transportation bill that went to a conference committee, "We were hawking it pretty closely," Thune said. "We had a lot of moving parts in that highway bill." ...
"We've got to think in a big, bold way what we can do to create a better future and more economic opportunities in the state," Thune said. The DM&E's expansion "generates momentum," Thune said. "It creates a culture of success, a culture of opportunity."
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