The (Almost) Daily Brief

Rochester’s Boom Is Built Around Mayo

By Megan Dayton · 8/4/2026

ENG  A coordinated cyberattack on 30 Minnesota water and wastewater systems put control-system security squarely in the design conversation. Over July 26 and 27, attackers hit the operational-technology systems at 30 Minnesota communities, disabling computerized controls, briefly taking the well and treatment plant offline in the small city of Braham, and forcing manual operation elsewhere. Drinking-water quality was not affected and no boil-water notices were issued. The intrusions targeted programmable logic controllers made by Rockwell, Schneider, and Siemens through a known authentication-bypass vulnerability, and CISA had updated its water-sector guidance days earlier. Officials have not formally attributed the attacks, though the pattern matches an Iran-linked group active against water utilities.

Sources: Tenable (CISA advisory AA26-097A); National Law Review, Jul. 30

POLICY  A Michigan high-court reversal is a permitting-durability lesson for anyone who relies on a state environmental record. On Friday, July 31, the Michigan Supreme Court voted 6-1 to vacate the state utility commission’s permit for the four-mile tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac that would house a replacement segment of Enbridge’s Line 5, and remanded for a fuller environmental review. The decision turned on questions the court said the commission never properly reached, including public-trust rights in the Great Lakes and whether Line 5 would keep operating without the tunnel. The court also determined the alternatives analysis to be "inconsistent." Enbridge still needs a federal permit from the Army Corps, and four Michigan tribes are challenging a separate state permit issued in July. Line 5’s Wisconsin reroute sits near the Minnesota border and echoes the Line 3 fights.

Sources: Bridge Michigan, Jul. 31; Planet Detroit, Aug. 1

ENG  MnDOT’s Highway 10 corridor study reaches Royalton next week. The department is studying 30 miles of Highway 10 from East Saint Germain Street in Saint Cloud to the south edge of Little Falls, focused on safety and congestion where at-grade crossings and signals slow traffic through Royalton and Saint Cloud. The next public meeting is Wednesday, August 12, from 2 to 6 pm at Royalton Middle and High School, with more sessions this fall and a final report expected in the winter. No design consultant has been named.

Source: KNSI, Jul. 31

BIZ  June construction spending held flat, and the year-over-year read is softer than the monthly number suggests. The Census Bureau reported that construction spending in June ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $2.17 trillion, down 0.1 percent from May and down 3.2 percent from a year earlier, with spending through the first half of the year off 3.5 percent against the same 2025 period. Public construction was essentially flat and highway and street spending eased 0.1 percent, while private residential spending slipped 0.3 percent.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Construction Spending, June (released Aug. 3)

BIZ  Data-center construction set another record. Data-center construction starts reached $22.3 billion in June, the second-highest monthly total on record, and year-to-date starts of $81.5 billion already exceed all of 2025. The average facility has more than doubled in size since 2022, to 700,000 square feet, and construction costs have climbed steeply. The leading states are North Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, with the pipeline concentrated where power and water are available.

Source: ConstructConnect, Jul. 28

POLICY  A Minnesota Supreme Court case will test how far an owner’s implied warranty reaches. In Ames Construction v. City of Moorhead (A25-0754), the contractor built a railroad grade-separation and hit slope failures in the temporary earth-retention systems it was responsible for designing. Ames says the city’s 2008 geotechnical report, included in the 2018 bid materials, was inaccurate, and it seeks $15.3 million in added cost under the Spearin doctrine. The district court and, in a March nonprecedential decision, the Court of Appeals sided with the city. They held that the report was a bid attachment rather than a contract document, that it was neither a “plan” nor a “specification” under the incorporated MnDOT standard specifications, that the temporary-system design was delegated to Ames, and that the report disclaimed the use Ames made of it. The Supreme Court granted review, and the case is now being briefed. The decision in this case will steer differing-site-conditions risk toward either the owner who supplies the data or the contractor who relies on it.

Disclosure: ACEC Minnesota, with the Minnesota Society of Professional Engineers, has been granted leave to file a joint amicus brief supporting the City, alongside the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the League of Minnesota Cities. The Associated General Contractors of Minnesota supports Ames. This item reports the public record and takes no side.

Source: Minnesota Court of Appeals opinion A25-0754 (Mar. 30, 2026); Minnesota Supreme Court order (Jul. 6, 2026).

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