WASHINGTON - A company seeking to run coal trains through downtown Rochester, Minn., has a poor safety record and should be denied a $2.5 billion federal loan for the project, the Mayo Clinic said Thursday.

"We have a medical and moral obligation to protect and defend the health and safety of our patients and staff," said Glenn Forbes, a physician and chief executive officer of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

Appearing at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington with Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., Forbes said he is asking the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to consider the risk to public safety when the agency decides whether to give the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern (DM&E) Railroad the loan, which would be one of the largest ever granted to a private company. The project would expand the railroad from Wyoming through South Dakota and Minnesota to the Mississippi River.

Using government statistics, the Mayo Clinic prepared a report for the FRA showing that DM&E "has one of the worst, if not the worst, safety records of all U.S. railroads."

Defending company's record

Kevin Schieffer, president and CEO of DM&E, agreed that safety has been a problem in the past but said that's not the case today.

"We have not had a good safety record in the past compared to railroads with good infrastructures," he said.

Money for the project would help improve safety of the rail line because it would bring track upgrades, more efficient operations and investment in measures such as rail crossings, he said.

Defending his company's record, Schieffer said the firm that "has defied all the experts by successfully running a line that couldn't be saved." In the last five years, he said, DM&E has been able to rebuild some of the worn-out track and has improved its safety results.

High rate of accidents

The Rochester Coalition, which opposes the railroad, plans to release details from the report on DM&E in newspaper advertisements next week.

According to the report, DM&E had 107 accidents involving trains carrying hazardous materials in the past 10 years, including a record 16 in 2005, and the company reported train accidents at a rate 7.5 times higher than the national average from 2000 to 2005.

Between 2000 and 2005, the FRA shows DM&E had 900 train accidents and incidents, which resulted in 24 fatalities. And in July 2004, about 100 people had to be evacuated in Balaton, Minn., when a train derailed and spilled 45,000 gallons of ethanol.

Larry Mann, a national rail safety expert who helped draft the Rail Safety Act of 1970 and who is now working with Mayo, said DM&E is "a poster child" for how not to run a railroad.

"It's unsafe at any speed," he said.

Dayton, who has also questioned DM&E's ability to repay such a big loan, said that at a minimum the rail line must bypass Rochester.

"I continue to be amazed that it's even a matter of dispute," Dayton said. He said a rail spill of hazardous materials in downtown Rochester would be "absolutely disastrous."

'Fraught with risk'