The (Almost) Daily Brief

20-Year Highway Investment Plan

By Megan Dayton · 10/5/2026

Join me Thursday, Oct. 8. I am brushing off my demography skills at the ACEC Minnesota Leadership Breakfast to walk through the demographic and economic forces reshaping the engineering workforce, and what they mean for hiring, retention, and firm strategy. 8am to 10:30am, $55. Registration is open.

POLICY  Iowa enacted the tax-credit expansion Mesabi Metallics wanted before committing to a $15 billion steel mill. Gov. Kim Reynolds signed House File 2801 on Oct. 2 after a one-day special session. The House passed it 75 to 17 and the Senate 28 to 19, with members of both parties voting against it in each chamber. The bill amends Iowa’s Major Economic Growth Attraction program to let tax credits on eligible projects reach 10 percent of investment, up from 5 percent, and to pay them over 10 years instead of five. On a $15 billion project the credits reach $1.5 billion, payable once the plant is running and contingent on hiring and production benchmarks. It is the largest taxpayer commitment to a private project in Iowa history. Mesabi Metallics, the Minnesota subsidiary of the India-based Essar Group, would feed the mill with iron ore mined at its Minnesota operation and move product by rail and Mississippi River barge. The company puts construction at 6,000 temporary and 1,750 permanent jobs. The site in Lee County has not been disclosed, and the chair of the county board of supervisors says the company has not committed to it. Lee County has no zoning or permitting ordinance that would govern the plant itself, only a hauling permit for its secondary roads. The company’s chief executive told lawmakers that financing for its own share is not closed. The Iowa Economic Development Authority board has yet to approve the agreement.

Sources: KTTC, Oct. 2; KTTC, Oct. 5

ENG  Rochester votes tonight on a $19 million contract to dredge Silver Lake and replace its dam. The City Council takes up the award at 6pm in council chambers of the city-county Government Center. The contract puts dredging at $4.8 million and dam replacement at $7.8 million, building rock arch rapids and wave pools east of the North Broadway Avenue bridge. Restricting the dredging to the areas of greatest need would cut $730,000. North-side trail work runs $3.6 million, and piers for a future pedestrian bridge on the west side run $263,000, with the bridge itself deferred. Another $2.5 million covers traffic control and erosion control. Total project cost is $21.7 million including design and engineering, funded from $11 million of reserved 1982 and 1989 flood control funds, $4.3 million of local stormwater utility funds, $3 million from Rochester Public Utilities, and $2.5 million in state grants. The bid came in 9.8 percent below the latest engineering estimate and 40 percent above the 2020 project estimate. Project manager Matt Crawford reported that estimates climbed over the past year as shoreline work was added and as the length, width, and number of rock arch rapids changed in response to Department of Natural Resources guidance. The work alters 15 percent of the lake surface and reclaims land on the east end to extend the north trail. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency have issued their permits, and the Department of Natural Resources permit was still pending when the contract reached the agenda. Construction could start Oct. 12, with completion targeted for Sept. 1, 2027.

Source: Rochester Post Bulletin, Oct. 4

BIZ  Four businesses have closed on the Rochester street being rebuilt for bus rapid transit. The Second Street corridor has been under construction for a year for a line that is the signature piece of the 20-year, $5.6 billion Destination Medical Center program. Four shops and restaurants there have closed this year, two of them last week, and the line does not open until next August. The Destination Medical Center board has approved another $500,000 for the city’s Business Forward program, and the City Council votes tonight on co-signing it. The program spent $231,000 in its first year on wayfinding signage and professional photography for affected businesses. It cannot make direct payments or loans. During light rail construction in 2011, Saint Paul and Minneapolis offered affected small retailers and restaurants $20,000 interest-free forgivable loans. Rochester says that is not under discussion and that it faces strict requirements on how taxpayer dollars can be used. Jenna Bowman, the city’s strategic communications and engagement director, called the transit line the largest public infrastructure project in Rochester history. Cafe Steam owner Will Forsman said the program “reads as a PR stunt” and that customers cannot physically reach the storefronts.

Source: MPR News, Oct. 4

ENG  Brainerd is rewriting its comprehensive plan partly to raise the point at which a housing project triggers environmental review. The Planning Commission reviewed draft updates on Sept. 16 and asked staff to bring back one more draft in October before a public hearing is set for later this fall. Bolton & Menk holds the update contract. One stated goal is a higher threshold for the mandatory environmental assessment worksheet on residential development. Cities outside the seven-county metro area may raise that threshold under state statute by filing certification of a qualified comprehensive plan with the Environmental Quality Board. A worksheet lays out a project’s basic facts and assesses its potential for significant environmental effects, which determines whether an environmental impact statement follows. The plan was approved in 2019 and amended in 2022 to carry a revised future land use map, and Community Development Director James Kramvik told the City Council in January that it should be reviewed every five years for consistency with the zoning code.

Source: Brainerd Dispatch, Oct. 1

ENG  Ordinary building walls do almost nothing to stop the low-frequency hum a data center makes. Kasey Fowler-Finn, a biology professor at Saint Louis University, released model data center noise guidance last month drawn from research she has run since 2001. A 4-inch wall handles a typical high-frequency noise around 1,000 hertz. Stopping a 63-hertz tone, which is what large cooling and HVAC systems emit, takes a wall 4.5 feet thick, and a 20-hertz tone takes 14 feet. Sound loses 6 decibels with every doubling of distance and 30 decibels by 3,000 feet, but absorption works poorly on long wavelengths, which pass through walls and windows with little loss and can set off vibrations and rattles in nearby structures. The guidance calls for setbacks of no less than 1,500 feet. Data centers are commonly permitted under the 100- to 600-foot industrial setbacks written for broadband noise. The guidance also calls for third-octave band sound pressure testing across 20 to 200 hertz alongside A-weighted and C-weighted measures, so that a facility cannot clear a single broadband allowance by averaging one loud low-frequency band against quieter ones. Five of six lawsuits filed this year against operating data centers name noise as the main problem, with cases pending in Vineland (NJ), Dowagiac (MI), North Tonawanda (NY), and Hood County (TX). A September survey by Science for Georgia and Quiet Communities found 80 percent of people living near a data center can hear it inside their home and 70 percent said it interfered with their ability to relax.

Source: Construction Dive, Oct. 2

POLICY  Minnesota joined a petition against the repeal of the federal power plant carbon standards. A coalition of 25 states, cities, and counties petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Oct. 1 over the repeal of most of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units. Minnesota’s attorney general is on the filing, with Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois among the other states. The District of Columbia, the City and County of Denver, the governor of Pennsylvania, and the mayors of Chicago and New York City also joined. The same coalition filed a notice of intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to set emission guidelines for existing gas-fired plants, including the peaker plants that run at high demand. That notice is the step the Clean Air Act requires before an agency can be sued over a missed mandatory duty. Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in September that the agency had finalized the repeal and proposed rescinding every remaining greenhouse gas standard for the power sector, on the reasoning that the Clean Air Act does not authorize the agency to regulate power plant greenhouse gases to address climate change. The agency points to the rescission of the 2009 endangerment finding and to the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright.

Source: Utility Dive, Oct. 2

WORKFORCE  HUD is leaving its Section 3 labor-hour targets where they are because it still cannot measure whether they are met. The department published a benchmark notification on Oct. 5, effective Nov. 4, that keeps the ratios set in its original 2020 notice. It opened comments through Dec. 4. Section 3 of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 directs employment and other economic opportunity generated by federal housing and community development assistance toward low- and very low-income workers. The regulations at 24 CFR part 75 require HUD to reset the benchmarks for Section 3 workers and Targeted Section 3 workers at least every three years. HUD says the data it holds is not a representative sample. The 2020 rule took effect Nov. 30, 2020, and compliance reached only projects funded on or after July 1, 2021. Labor hours are counted and benchmark achievement judged only once a project is complete, so the larger Section 3 projects funded after that date have not reported final hours. The reporting application for public housing financial assistance launched Jan. 21, 2026, and the last cohort of housing authorities closed its reporting window on July 30, 2026, which leaves one year of data where the rule calls for three.

Source: 91 FR 63146, Oct. 5

POLICY  GSA proposed rewriting the rules for how the government buys utility services. The proposed rule published Oct. 5 amends part 541 of the General Services Administration Acquisition Regulation, which carries the procedures and guidance for procuring utility services, to align it with the FAR Council’s proposed rule for FAR part 41. It runs as GSAR Case 2026-G502 under docket GSA-GSAR-2026-0595 at 91 FR 63243 and implements Executive Order 14275. Comments close Nov. 4. GSA’s guidance does not reach agencies acting under the special authorities at FAR 41.103(a)(2) and (3).

Source: 91 FR 63243, Oct. 5

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