The (Almost) Daily Brief

Met Council Will Reopen Quarter-Billion-Dollar Road Funding Round After Federal Objection

By Megan Dayton · 10/6/2026

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  MISO has asked federal regulators for a 120-day study track that pairs a large load with the generation built to serve it. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator filed its Large Load Addition Resource Study proposal at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Oct. 2. The track would be open to loads above 200 megawatts and to generation inside the same local resource zone, and MISO’s 10 local resource zones generally follow state lines. MISO would study a maximum of 10 applications in each of three annual study periods, with non-refundable deposits meant to screen out speculative projects. The generator’s commercial operation date and the load’s in-service date must both fall within three years of the application. The load may take service in phases but must take the full amount of transmission service it requested by the time the generator starts operating, and under some conditions more than one generating facility may serve it. Generation and load must stay paired for 15 years. MISO told the commission the process responds to FERC’s June finding that its large-load rules are inadequate, including for integrating proximate load and generation, and it asked for a decision by Dec. 2 so the first study period can open early next year. MISO expects load growth of 1 percent to 3 percent per year through 2044, and says projects already in the standard generation interconnection queue are unaffected.

Source: Utility Dive, Oct. 5

ENG  MnDOT is buying regional traffic modeling of three construction seasons in the southwest metro. Contract 1064206, Highway 13 Traffic Modeling, posted Oct. 5 and closes Oct. 20 at 2pm, open only to consultants pre-qualified in traffic engineering special studies. MnDOT does not anticipate costs above $300,000. The Highway 13 reconstruction is anticipated to begin in 2027 and may continue through 2028 and 2029, rebuilt in stages on temporary and new pavement while lane capacity stays limited. The scope asks for scenario analysis of how that staging interacts with work on Interstate 494, the new Interstate 35 and County State Aid Highway 50 interchange, bridge and pavement work on Highway 62, and pavement work on Highway 169. The study area, to be confirmed at kickoff, runs to Highway 62 on the north, Highway 169 on the west, County Road 21 and County Road 60 on the south, and Interstate 35E and Highway 77 on the east. The consultant will build a maximum of five scenarios across calendar years 2027, 2028, and 2029 and will work with MnDOT and Metropolitan Council staff on the Activity-Based Model, the framework the Met Council uses for Twin Cities regional traffic forecasting. The scope states the model is not validated for speeds, so travel times will be compared against the base year or adjusted to observed travel times. Written questions are due Oct. 12 at 2pm and answers post Oct. 14.

Sources: MnDOT professional/technical notices; Announcement and scope of work, contract 1064206

ENG  A dip has developed in a MnDOT roundabout that opened in July, and the cause is not yet known. The roundabout at Highway 19 and County Road 2 north of Lonsdale opened in mid-July. Crews applied temporary asphalt patching Sept. 28 to even out the dip while the department looks for a cause. District 6 spokesperson Mike Dougherty said it could be a sinkhole, a broken drainage pipe, or something else happening underground, and that crews have run cameras through the piping to check whether the drainage structures are intact. He said a pipe break on new construction is “pretty rare.” The sidewalk abutting the dip has begun to crack. Wet soil conditions in the area were accounted for during construction, with different fill and deeper excavation for the wetlands in and around Lonsdale, and that work is part of what MnDOT will evaluate. The dip appeared after a storm that dropped 1.64 inches of rain on Lonsdale, and the department has not determined whether the rain is connected.

Source: Lonsdale Area News Review, Oct. 6

ENG  Rochester’s City Council awarded the Silver Lake dredging and dam contract to the low bidder at $18.9 million. The council voted 6 to 1 on Oct. 5 to award the construction contract to Rachel Contracting, the lowest of four bids and 9.8 percent below the engineer’s estimate. Early bids had run as high as $24 million against the city’s original $15 million budget, and the gap is covered in part by additional state grant dollars. The contract carries $7.3 million for dredging and $7.8 million for dam modification. The council also approved an $80,000 design amendment for additional state and federal permitting, hydraulic modeling, and design changes to the rapids, trails, and shoreline, which brings total final design cost to $873,000. In a related action timed to the lake drawdown it approved an $8.2 million contract to replace the Zumbro River siphon under Silver Lake, adding sewer capacity for growth in east Rochester along with sewer upsizing and a new roundabout. The existing low-head dam comes out and a rock arch rapids structure with wave pools replaces it, altering 5 acres of the lake’s 34-acre footprint, and the work restores 1 acre of lake surface lost when the Seventh Street bridge was built in 1956. Deputy Public Works Director Aaron Luckstein said annual maintenance cost should fall from $32,000 to $6,000 with the new structure, and that the changes hold flood control at existing levels upstream and downstream while letting fish move upstream to the city’s reservoirs. Construction starts Oct. 12 and runs through September 2027.

Sources: Rochester Post Bulletin, Oct. 5; KTTC, Oct. 6

ENG  A padlocked gate on a disputed township road has stalled a Chippewa County park purchase and the grant behind it. The Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources will not release a $170,000 grant until the county has full legal and physical access to the 40-acre site near the Minnesota River, and the Department of Natural Resources has raised the same access question. County Auditor-Treasurer-Coordinator Michelle May told the county park board Sept. 30 that the county treats the route as a township road. It holds records from the 1980s showing Sparta Township maintained the road and counted it in the road system it drew transportation funding for, and it has no record that the road was ever vacated or turned over to private ownership. It has no recent maintenance records either. The property owner has used the field road since 1974 and found it chained and padlocked. The adjacent landowner’s prescriptive-easement claim against the property failed in district court and at the Court of Appeals, and the Minnesota Supreme Court denied his petition this year. He intends to take the roadway question to district court. The park board voted unanimously to ask the county board to press Sparta Township to maintain the road and provide access. The commission approved the grant in 2020.

Source: West Central Tribune, Oct. 6

POLICY  The EPA is taking comment on where the 2024 fine-particle standard will apply. The notice published Oct. 6 sets out the agency’s intended approach to initial area designations under Clean Air Act section 107(d) and takes comment through Nov. 5. The 2024 standard put the primary annual PM2.5 level at 9.0 micrograms per cubic meter, and an area meets it when the three-year average of annual means at a monitor sits at or below that level. The agency sent its 120-day letters to states, territories, and certain Tribes on or about Oct. 2 and asked for additional information within 30 days of receipt. Governors filed initial designations in February 2025 on 2021-2023 design values, and the agency intends to rely on 2023-2025 values for the final designations. Where a state recommended attainment and the agency agrees, it intends to use the designation “attainment/unclassifiable,” which carries the same obligations as attainment. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered final designations for the whole country by Feb. 6, 2027, and the agency is appealing that order while completing the designations in the meantime. The designations themselves sit in the individual 120-day letters and the docket, not in the notice.

Source: 91 FR 63516, Oct. 6, docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0078

POLICY  ACEC has endorsed the Senate’s bipartisan permitting bill. The council released its statement Oct. 5 on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, the permitting measure Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mike Lee, and Martin Heinrich introduced Sept. 30. ACEC calls the bill “an important step forward in reforming an inefficient permitting process” and urges Congress to pass a bill this year. The measure would move transmission siting decisions to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission project by project, eliminate National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors, and end the federal right of first refusal.

Source: ACEC Last Word, Oct. 5

POLICY  Minneapolis’s mayor vetoed an ordinance requiring a person behind the wheel of a driverless car. The City Council passed the measure 7 to 6 on Oct. 1. It requires a special city license and a person in the driver’s seat on every trip, and Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed it the next day, calling it a “back door ban.” An override needs nine votes, two more than the ordinance drew, and its authors have asked their colleagues to supply them. The ordinance would not take effect until October 2027, leaving the Legislature a session to consider statewide rules. Waymo and other opponents have said the requirement would push robotaxis out of the city and raise costs for riders. The authors put the city’s rideshare driver workforce at 10,000 and describe the measure as protecting those jobs from automation. An Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study found Waymo’s vehicles had a 68 percent lower crash-involvement rate than human drivers in the same areas and time periods.

Sources: KSTP, Oct. 1; KSTP, Oct. 2

FUNDING  Applications for the EPA’s water workforce grant close Oct. 15. The Innovative Water Infrastructure Workforce Development Grant, EPA-OW-OWM-26-03, runs under section 1459E of the Safe Drinking Water Act and carries $10.8 million in estimated total funding with an award ceiling of $7.8 million and no floor. Eligible applicants are institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, and public works departments and agencies. Eligible activities include apprenticeship and internship programs, education programs for elementary, secondary, and higher-education students, regional industry collaborations, and training designed to support a decentralized workforce. The competition opened Aug. 19 under assistance listing 66.445.

Source: Grants.gov, EPA-OW-OWM-26-03

BIZ  Data center builders say the new state restrictions are lengthening timelines without reducing demand. Chris Teddy, national director of mission critical at JE Dunn Construction, said rising scrutiny of power availability, water usage, land use, and community impact “can extend timelines and add complexity during the planning and entitlement phases” without stopping projects. Kim Roy, chief executive of HITT Contracting, which has built data centers for 25 years, said she has not seen community opposition or state restrictions reach the company’s construction schedules. Virginia’s governor signed an executive order in September barring projects with anticipated peak demand of at least 25 megawatts from state expedited-permitting and site-development assistance, and directing state agencies to address noise, emissions, water use, and electricity demand over the next several months. Pennsylvania’s governor signed an August order giving local communities a greater role in the development process. Texas’s governor directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt data center permits until the state grid operator completes an audit.

Source: Construction Dive, Oct. 5

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