ENG A new 345-kV line across the Iron Range is heading for a Certificate of Need decision. The Iron Range - Saint Louis County - Arrowhead project, proposed by Minnesota Power and American Transmission Company, would run 67.5 miles from Minnesota Power’s Iron Range Substation near Grand Rapids to its Saint Louis County Substation near Hermantown, with a tie to the Arrowhead Substation. Ninety-two percent of the route follows existing transmission corridors across Itasca and Saint Louis counties, and half the line rebuilds an existing 230-kV segment to 345 kV. The comment period on the merits of the Certificate of Need opened in June, and the Public Utilities Commission has the need question on its Aug. 20 meeting agenda, with a separate route permit under docket 25-112. It is one of several 345-kV projects advancing in northern Minnesota as utilities reinforce the regional grid, and it carries routing, environmental-review, geotechnical, and structural scope.
Sources: Minnesota PUC, Energy Infrastructure Permitting (ISA project); Minnesota PUC, August 2026 newsletter (Aug. 20 agenda)
POLICY Pressure is building over the infrastructure law’s expiring transportation funding. One hundred transportation, labor, and business groups are pressing congressional leaders as the 2021 infrastructure law’s Division J advance appropriations, $36.8 billion a year, head toward a Sept. 30 expiration. The stopgap the Senate passed Aug. 8 extended surface programs through Dec. 11 but left those advance appropriations out, and a full reauthorization has not moved. Without them, competitive grant programs that Minnesota agencies and their consultants tap, including Safe Streets and Roads for All, the Bridge Formula Program, Mega grants, and Capital Investment Grants, face cuts of 50 to 100 percent from current levels. The House takes the question up when it returns in September.
Source: Holland & Knight, Aug. 12
FUNDING The infrastructure law’s airport-grant program is paying out its last round. The Federal Aviation Administration awarded $870 million on Aug. 4 across 339 airports in 44 states and two territories, the fifth and final installment of the $14.5 billion Airport Infrastructure Grants program created by the 2021 infrastructure law. The money funds runway and taxiway rehabilitation, terminal upgrades, and safety improvements.
Sources: Flying, Aug. 4; AASHTO Journal
BIZ Capital keeps flooding toward AI infrastructure. Bank of America launched a Critical Infrastructure Finance Initiative on Aug. 12 to mobilize $250 billion over the next year for power, water, transportation, and manufacturing capacity tied to the AI buildout. It follows word that Nvidia lined up $500 billion in asset-backed financing, its chips as collateral, from BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Apollo to fund new data centers, and it joins a $1.5 trillion decade-long infrastructure push from Morgan Stanley.
Sources: Axios, Aug. 12; Business Chief, Aug. 12
ENG Aging suburban infrastructure is straining under heavier storms. A survey of the Philadelphia suburbs finds stormwater systems built before modern management rules and undersized pipes absorbing what one official called a 100-year storm every year. A July microburst destroyed homes in two boroughs, and rising summer temperatures, up 4.4 degrees since 1940, let the air hold 7 percent more moisture for every 1.8-degree rise.
ENG A Southern California project is converting a natural-gas pipeline into a water line. Cadiz set guaranteed-maximum-price contracts on Aug. 4 with W.M. Lyles, at $218.9 million for pump stations and construction management, and Mike Bubalo Construction, at $54.9 million for the pipeline conversion, within a $403 million effort to repurpose a 220-mile former gas pipeline to move 25,000 acre-feet of water a year to San Bernardino County. Construction is set to start in September, backed by an EPA approval for $194 million in low-interest federal loans.
Source: Construction Dive, Aug. 4
WORKFORCE AI use is climbing fastest in engineering and legal work. In an Inc. survey of high-growth-company chief executives, AI adoption reached 97 percent this year, up from 84 percent in 2023, and engineering support, including automating code, nearly doubled to 46 percent, one of the fastest-growing uses alongside legal at 35 percent. AI is moving from the margins into core technical production, where even modest gains in speed or capacity carry real value for high-cost specialist labor.
Source: Inc., Aug. 12
Close out the summer on the field - ACEC Minnesota’s Foundation Softball Tournament brings 16 member-firm teams together on Saturday, September 19 to support the next generation of engineers, and the four-session Emerging Leaders program for early-career staff runs this October and November. Sign up for both before spots fill up!
The (Almost) Daily Brief publishes most weekdays: policy, funding, workforce, and industry news for Minnesota’s engineering firms, in a few minutes of reading.