The (Almost) Daily Brief

White House Moves to Remove Canadian Products From Federal Procurement

By Megan Dayton · 9/21/2026

POLICY  An executive order revokes the 17-year-old federal mandate behind Chesapeake Bay cleanup programs. Executive Order 14428, signed Sept. 16 and published Monday, revokes Executive Order 13508 of May 12, 2009, which directed states and municipalities across the Chesapeake Bay watershed to contribute to the estuary’s environmental health. The new order says that mandate never explained how its requirements were to be carried out, and that localities leaned on it to impose stormwater management fees costing residents and small businesses hundreds of dollars a year. It directs the Secretaries of War, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Homeland Security and the EPA administrator to assess what their agencies spend on the bay and to redirect money away from activities that do not generate measurable progress and toward projects that cut nutrient and sediment runoff directly. It further directs the EPA to work with Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to measure what stormwater fees cost residents, to look for alternatives that do not raise those costs, and to encourage the repeal or rescission of the fees. The order credits the watershed jurisdictions with meeting 100 percent of their sediment-reduction goal, 90 percent of phosphorus, and 57 percent of nitrogen as of 2025.

Source: Federal Register, 91 FR 59975

FUNDING  The state bonding bill’s street money will not reach general street programs. Marty Seifert, a lobbyist for the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities, told the East Grand Forks City Council on Sept. 15 that most of it went to communities that asked for help with a specific project or to communities under 5,000 residents. City Engineer Steve Emery had asked whether any of the street-construction money could offset local project costs and assessments. The Legislature passed the $1.24 billion capital investment bill in May, 122 to 11 in the House of Representatives and 60 to 7 in the Senate, carrying $420 million for water infrastructure, $177 million for transportation, and $75 million for the University of Minnesota. Named programs inside it include $47 million in local road improvement fund grants, $25 million for local bridge replacement, and $15 million for lead service line replacement. Seifert put the cycle at $3 billion in requests against $1 billion funded. He said the coalition is still working on zoning and land use, particularly how housing is handled in rural communities.

Sources: Grand Forks Herald, Sept. 17; Minnesota House Session Daily, capital investment bill

ENG  Two Minnesota cities are out for a general municipal engineer at the same time. The City of Stacy wants one firm to serve as both city engineer and city planner, and will take proposals for either role on its own. The scope covers municipal engineering, infrastructure planning, project design and bidding, construction oversight, mapping and utility records, development review, zoning and subdivision administration, comprehensive plan and ordinance updates, grant assistance, parks planning, and meeting attendance. Proposals are due Oct. 2 at 5pm. The City of Foley posted its own request for general municipal engineering services on Sept. 15, due Oct. 28 at 4pm, and asks for municipal engineering experience and enough staff to meet the city’s needs on time, with the appointment subject to ongoing council review. Five other Minnesota cities have 2050 comprehensive plan solicitations open. Medina and Waconia both carve the surface water, water supply, sanitary sewer, and transportation chapters out of the planning contract and hand them to the city’s own engineering firm.

Sources: City of Stacy, request for engineering and planning services; City of Foley, professional engineering services RFP; League of Minnesota Cities marketplace

FUNDING  A federal school-construction competition is open to districts that cannot bond for repairs. The Department of Education announced the fiscal 2026 Impact Aid Discretionary Construction Grant Program competition on Monday. Applications run through Grants.gov and are due by 11:59pm eastern on Nov. 10. The program pays for emergency and modernization work at school districts whose boundaries hold large areas of federal land, which caps what they can raise locally for capital improvements. Emergency repairs are the single absolute priority this round. A district qualifies if federally connected children who live on Indian lands or have a parent on active duty make up half or more of its average daily attendance, if it has no practical capacity to issue bonds, has minimal capacity and has used 75 percent of its limit, or is a heavily impacted district under section 7003(b)(2), and if the Secretary of Education has found a facility emergency that poses a health or safety hazard. The Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration is running the solicitation on the Education Department’s behalf.

Sources: Federal Register, Sept. 21 (2026-19240); Department of Education, Impact Aid discretionary construction grants

BIZ  An Irish high-voltage specialist is opening a Dallas headquarters and hiring 1,000 people in the United States. H&MV Engineering, based in Limerick, said on Sept. 17 that it has established its North America headquarters in Dallas and plans 1,000 U.S. roles over five years. The firm designs, builds, and energizes high-voltage substations and grid connections for hyperscale technology companies, utilities, and energy developers, and carries projects in design and construction from 138 kV to 345 kV, with Texas and Louisiana its most active markets. It acquired Texas-based Cooke Power Services earlier this year. Revenue has gone from $70 million in 2020 to $1.1 billion, a recent investment transaction valued the company at $1.6 billion, and it reports 24 GW of projects in design and construction, a $2.3 billion order book, an $18.6 billion pipeline, and a target of $3.5 billion in annual revenue within five years. It runs 20 offices across Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and Asia, with 1,900 employees. Ken Gilmartin, its executive vice president for the United States, said Dallas puts the firm close to customers and to a deep pool of engineering and construction talent.

Sources: H&MV Engineering, Sept. 17; Chron, Sept. 20

BIZ  Hitachi Energy is putting $528 million into a new Mississippi transformer plant. The company announced the Gallman facility on Sept. 15. It will build transformers in the 10 MVA to 160 MVA range rated to 230 kV, and it is twice the size of the company’s existing Crystal Springs plant, whose production moves to Gallman once the new factory is finished. Production starts in 2029. Greg Callahan, senior vice president for the transformer business in North America, told Utility Dive the added capacity is expected to help ease industry-wide supply constraints as it comes online. The investment is the company’s largest single commitment in the United States and brings its U.S. manufacturing expansion to $1.5 billion, alongside added capacity in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Tennessee. Backlogs for transformers and other grid equipment have been slowing grid expansion while data centers, manufacturing, and electrification raise demand for power.

Source: Utility Dive, Sept. 18

BIZ  Housing completions fell 27 percent in a year. The Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development put August completions at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,128,000 in a report released Thursday, down 27.1 percent from August 2025 and 11.9 percent from July. Starts came in at 1,275,000, down 1.2 percent on the year against a confidence interval of 10.8 points, and the 22.5 percent monthly drop in buildings with five units or more carries an interval of 24.9 points. Midwest completions fell 36.0 percent on the year to 153,000, against an interval of 18.9 points. Permits ran at 1,394,000, up 3.5 percent on the year, and single-family starts at 918,000.

Source: Census Bureau and HUD, New Residential Construction, Sept. 17

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