The (Almost) Daily Brief

Minnesota Moves to Require Environmental Review of Five-Well Gas Projects

By Megan Dayton · 10/21/2026

PROJECTS  Environmental Quality Board staff recommend denying an early-demolition variance for a 972,200-square-foot Arden Hills development. Maplewood Development and Construction applied Aug. 6 for a variance for Hillview Business Park, a 62-acre warehouse, distribution and office development that exceeds the mandatory environmental impact statement threshold for industrial, commercial and institutional facilities at Minnesota Rules 4410.4400, subpart 11. The City of Arden Hills is the responsible governmental unit for the statement. Minnesota Rules 4410.3100 bars governmental approvals and construction until the statement is complete unless the board grants a variance. Staff published notice of the application in the EQB Monitor and in the public notices section of the Shoreview Press on Aug. 25, opening a 20-day comment period that closed Sept. 14. The board takes the item today at 2:25pm with a proposed Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order denying the request.

Source: Environmental Quality Board, October 2026 meeting packet

POLICY  Comments close Nov. 16 on the Metropolitan Council’s next three-year subcontracting goal. The council published notice of its Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program triennial goals for federal fiscal years 2027 through 2029. It proposes an overall Federal Transit Administration goal of 4.7 percent and an overall Environmental Protection Agency goal of 5.4 percent. A virtual public meeting runs Friday, Oct. 23 from 10 to 11am. Federal rules require the council to update the program goals every three years, and they set the subcontracting inclusion goals written into individual federally funded contracts. The council assigns a contract-specific goal where a project is federally funded, carries subcontracting opportunities, and exceeds $50,000 in value. Bidders and proposers on a contract carrying a goal must either meet the percentage or document good faith efforts.

Source: Metropolitan Council, Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program

FUNDING  Southeast Minnesota opened a $2.1 million Transportation Alternatives round that closes to letters of intent Oct. 30. MnDOT District 6, the 11-county southeast region, announced the solicitation Oct. 20. The money is federal Transportation Alternatives funding for project construction in fiscal year 2031, covering pedestrian and bicycle facilities, historic preservation, Safe Routes to School and related work. Applicants must submit a letter of intent to be considered. The district, the regional development organization and the metropolitan planning organization begin their review Nov. 2 and must return a recommendation to proceed by Nov. 25. The full application period opens Nov. 30 and closes Jan. 8, 2027. Area Transportation Partnerships select projects by March 29, 2027. Transportation Alternatives awards carry a maximum 80 percent federal share against a local match of 20 percent or more. The seven-county Twin Cities solicitation runs through the Metropolitan Council instead, on its own timeline.

Sources: MnDOT District 6, Oct. 20; MnDOT, Transportation Alternatives

ENG  Five projects in the Metropolitan Airports Commission’s seven-year capital program each carry a mandatory environmental review. The commission published its Assessment of Environmental Effects for the preliminary 2027-2033 Capital Improvement Program on Oct. 20 under Minnesota Statutes section 473.614. Comments close at 4pm Nov. 20, and a public hearing is set for Nov. 2 at 10:30am at Terminal 1. The statute makes an environmental assessment worksheet mandatory where a project falls in the first program year, costs $5 million or more at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International or $2 million or more at a reliever airport, and builds or expands a structure for handling passengers, cargo, vehicles or aircraft, or a runway or taxiway. The assessment names three projects at Minneapolis-Saint Paul in that class: West Cargo Development in 2027, covered by the 1996 Dual Track federal and state environmental impact statements and needing an updated worksheet; Terminal 1 boiler and chiller replacement with an energy management center expansion in 2028; and Green/Gold parking ramp replacement in 2030. At the reliever airports it names Airlake’s Runway 12-30 improvements, with a federal environmental assessment and state worksheet in process, and Flying Cloud’s Taxiway A extension in 2029. The commission states that the final program, due in December 2026, will split the West Cargo line, listed at $60 million in 2027, into a 2027 concrete apron contract and a 2028 building and vehicle parking contract, and that it will complete the worksheet for the 2028 project in 2027.

Sources: Metropolitan Airports Commission, Assessment of Environmental Effects, Oct. 20; EQB Monitor, Oct. 20

PROJECTS  A route change put the transmission line to Google’s proposed data center beyond the reach of Hermantown’s shoreland ordinance. The city council voted 5-0 on Oct. 19 to approve a route permit for two 1.6-mile lines rated to 230 kV connecting Minnesota Power’s Arrowhead Substation to the proposed 1.7-million-square-foot data center near Morris Thomas and Midway roads. The council first took up the permit at its Oct. 8 meeting and tabled it after residents raised the city’s expired shoreland ordinance, which regulates development around rivers and lakes. Minnesota Power returned with a route that avoids an intermittent stream crossing in the southwest corner of the project area and its 300-foot shoreland buffer. Daniel McCourtney, manager of strategic environmental initiatives at Allete, told the council the project “no longer enters a shoreland impact zone.” Community Development Director Eric Johnson apologized for having blamed the Department of Natural Resources at the Oct. 8 meeting for the delay. The vote followed 90 minutes of public comment that largely opposed the permit.

Source: Duluth News Tribune, Oct. 20

WORKFORCE  Twin Cities electricians and carpenters out-earn the national medians for their trades. The Minnesota Star Tribune published 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics medians for selected occupations on Oct. 20. Twin Cities electricians sit at $81,890 against $78,160 statewide and $63,190 nationally, and carpenters at $74,060 against $64,930 and $60,580. Registered nurses are at $103,040, elementary teachers at $79,730 and management analysts at $101,560. The Twin Cities median across all occupations is $59,000, and the education, training and library group had a 2025 median of $60,000. Brian Winkelaar, business agent for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 110, put apprentice unemployment in the local at 30 percent and called construction “definitely cyclical.” Pew Research Center defines middle income as two-thirds to double the area median, which the paper puts at $58,000 to $174,000 per household in Minnesota.

Source: Minnesota Star Tribune, Oct. 20

PROJECTS  Chisholm traced a bid overage on its new public works garage to backfill left by an old street project. The city council took formal action at its Oct. 14 meeting to reject all bids on a facility it is building with Chisholm Public Schools. Public Works Director Larry Folstad told the council the bids landed $2.5 million over a budget above $6 million, and that site work drove the overage. He attributed the site work cost to backfill left at the site from when Sixth Street was redone years ago. The city had been awarded $1.2 million from Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation for a public works facility and planned $2 million in general obligation bonds for its share. Interim City Clerk and Treasurer Devin Ceglar said the city is structuring bond repayments to coincide with maturing debt so the debt levy does not rise against previous years. Chisholm Public Schools is using part of an Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation grant for infrastructure, site development and construction. Folstad said no additional funds are available.

Source: Mesabi Tribune, Oct. 21

BIZ  Design firms’ professional liability policies carry no artificial-intelligence exclusion. Insurers and brokers of liability policies for design professionals and contractors told Engineering News-Record on Oct. 9 that none is expected soon either. The Insurance Services Office, a property and casualty analytics provider, created a model exclusion earlier this year. Broker Arthur J. Gallagher has written that the endorsement may create coverage gaps that are not immediately obvious, and that those gaps can affect claim outcomes, contractual compliance, bid responsiveness and prequalification with owners and public entities. Michelle Chia, chief underwriting officer in the Americas for cyber, design and select professions at AXA XL, said the insurer is not applying artificial intelligence exclusions and that its forms for architects and engineers are “agnostic as to how the matter occurs.” Several insurers cover some artificial intelligence misuse under separate cyber policies. One Berkley Insurance unit carries an absolute exclusion on directors and officers errors and omissions policies, which do not reach design and construction work. Law firm Shumaker expects silent artificial intelligence coverage, carried today under cyber and technology errors and omissions policies, to give way to dedicated products with separate fees and payout limits.

Source: Engineering News-Record, Oct. 9

ENG  Researchers fitted a Richfield roundabout with its own 360-degree camera and edge computer. A Center for Connected and Automated Transportation project with the Minnesota Robotics Institute, led by University of Minnesota research engineer Ted Morris, installed a fisheye camera on a 35-foot traffic camera pole at 66th Street and Portland Avenue. An adjacent enclosed cabinet held edge computing equipment, a 5G router and a Wi-Fi antenna. The camera captures up to 30 frames per second, and the YOLO object-detection model processes and transmits an image in 8.33 milliseconds or less. Cars made up 85 percent of the images classified at the intersection. Morris said vehicle tracking was relatively robust while performance for pedestrians “was not satisfactory.” He attributed that to fewer pedestrians in the datasets and to image resolution limits that make smaller objects harder to discern. The team plans later YOLO models, higher-resolution streaming video and hardware that cuts transmission latency, and a second phase using the roundabout data to predict traffic behavior alongside an experimental vehicle. The U.S. Department of Transportation funded the work through the center at the University of Michigan. The Center for Transportation Studies published the findings Oct. 20.

Source: University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, Oct. 20

BIZ  Speculative industrial buildings of at least 1 million square feet under construction went from 18 to 33 in a quarter. JLL released its third-quarter Industrial Market Dynamics report on Oct. 20. Industrial space under construction reached 317 million square feet, 28.7 percent above a year earlier and 14.8 percent above the previous quarter, the highest level since early 2024. Build-to-suit and owner-user projects accounted for 100.1 million square feet, 32.4 percent of the pipeline against a 26.8 percent five-year average. The firm tracks a national inventory of 16.3 billion square feet. It reports that advanced manufacturers are weighting available power and skilled labor, and that newer facilities carry climate control, crane capability and space for automation that existing buildings lack. Elizabeth Holder, a research manager on JLL’s national industrial research team and a co-author of the report, called it “certainly a recovery” and said developers are taking a more disciplined approach than in the pandemic-era building cycle.

Source: Engineering News-Record, Oct. 20

ENG  Minneapolis is stretching its concrete streets to 65 to 70 years instead of replacing them. Minneapolis Public Works launched a Concrete Pavement Preservation strategy in 2016 and has expanded it citywide, most recently in the Kenwood neighborhood along Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake. The first year covered six to eight miles of concrete streets in Waite Park with diamond grinding, partial-depth and full-depth repairs, joint and crack sealing, and accessibility ramp construction. The department expects renewed pavements to gain 25 years of service life, and now targets three to four miles per year. Advanced techniques include slab stabilization to fill voids beneath slabs, dowel bar retrofitting to distribute loads across slabs, and cross-stitching to preserve aggregate interlock in low-severity cracks. Crews sound slabs with a chain or hammer to find hidden voids and set repair boundaries. In reinforced streets they use metal detectors to mark rebar before removal. Partial-depth repairs mill 2 to 3 inches deep with a 10-inch-wide machine. Joints wider than three-quarter inch are candidates for milling and partial-depth repair. On full-depth panel replacement, new slabs should be no less than 6 feet wide at full lane width, and cuts around manholes and other appurtenances should stay close to 90 degrees. The department delivers the work through indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts and holds weekly virtual stakeholder meetings during the construction season. Dan Labo, executive director at the Concrete Pavement Association of Minnesota, said the city is “reducing maintenance and construction disruptions” over the pavement lifecycle.

Source: Roads & Bridges, Oct. 19

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