BELLE FOURCHE - Mike Ortner has found support for a proposed railroad traffic law among Black Hills county officials, and now, the Fall River County commissioner hopes to find a legislator to carry the bill through this year's South Dakota Legislature.

In Belle Fourche on Friday, the Black Hills Association of County Commissioners and County Officials voted unanimously to support Ortner's proposal for a new law to govern how trains interact with road intersections inside and outside city limits.

Ortner, who also is the first vice president and president-elect of the South Dakota Association of County Commissioners, said he plans to be in Pierre this week to promote his bill.

What he wants is a way to force mile-long trains from blocking private vehicles for more than 20 minutes at intersections. He would have train crews who break the law arrested and charged as if they were driving a truck.

Current law, he said, has virtually nothing on the books to keep a train from blocking a highway or city street for hours or even days - except that, if emergency vehicles are held up for more than 20 minutes, the train company could be fined $200.

Experience in Edgemont with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad blocking traffic while train crews are switched could be a statewide problem when the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern gets its rail upgrade and begins carrying coal from Wyoming as well as bentonite from Belle Fourche.

Today's trains in the west are one mile to two miles long, Ortner said.

"With DM&E coming, and it is coming … it's going to happen."

He said the railroad already is buying land in Fall River County at "like 800 bucks an acre" for its extension into Wyoming's Powder River Basin coal fields.

That rail traffic would join current DM&E tracks coming from the bentonite fields on the west end of Belle Fourche, then proceed across the state on new rails.

But the coal trains aren't the freight trains of myth, Ortner said Friday. They're one- to two-mile strings of rail cars carrying bulk materials.

"We see it coming and we want to get ahead of the curve," he said.

In Edgemont, he said, trains currently are blocking traffic "for up to an hour and a half."

He wants a state law to make the maximum wait for "John Q. Citizen," school buses and other traffic no more than 20 minutes unless a train is broken down.

There should be a maximum halt of 10 minutes for an emergency vehicle, Ortner said.

It also should be illegal, he said, to block road traffic intersections "just for the purpose of changing crews."

His bill would put the burden on the train crews, not on train companies.

"The only way we thought we could get their attention was to start arresting crews," Ortner said.

That would bring the rail unions into the mix, as well as the companies in making sure that trains don't block traffic just because there is no penalty for it.

"It's going to be a tough battle," he said, "because that railroad lobby is very powerful."

Asked how a two-mile train traveling at slow speed through a town could legally vacate an intersection for an emergency vehicle, Ortner said, "They could break the train."

There was no answer to a question about how a train crew in front of a two-mile train might know if there's an emergency vehicle needing to get through.

The motion to support Ortner's proposal was made by Meade County and seconded by Harding County, and there was no opposition votes.

The Black Hills county government association includes Butte, Corson, Custer, Dewey, Fall River, Haakon, Harding, Jackson, Lawrence, Meade, Pennington, Perkins and Ziebach counties.

Other topics on the agenda Friday included general support for a bill that would give counties latitude in whether ag value or sale value of agricultural land would be the basis for assessment for taxes - and another try to add a county sales tax to liquor sales.

Meade County Director of Equalization Kirk Chaffee said he believes the only way for there to be support for the state's schools from property tax, but also appropriate taxation for agricultural producers, is to give counties latitude in assessing agricultural property.

Another topic discussed without a vote came from Meade County Commissioner Dayle Hammock, who said his county commission is on record against Gov. Mike Rounds' proposal to buy development easements around Bear Butte.

That would be using taxpayer money to give preference to a single religious group, he said.