Minnesota’s Infrastructure Report Card Is Out. Now What?

Episode Transcript

Mollie (Host)
Welcome to {Brief}ly Speaking, the SEH podcast where we break down big topics in architecture, engineering, and construction into quick, useful insights. Minnesota's latest infrastructure report card is out, and of course, it's getting attention for the grades. But here's the real question. What are communities actually supposed to do with that information? Because whether it's water systems, treatment facilities, or structural assets, these grades reflect real conditions that impact reliability, cost, and long-term planning. Today we're focusing less on the scores and more about what comes next. Joining me is Ariel Christensen, a structural engineer with over a decade of experience in design, from water and wastewater structures to airport projects. She works closely with communities on everything from repairing aging infrastructure to designing new facilities, and she brings a practical perspective on how these system conditions show up in real projects. So Ariel, welcome to {Brief}ly Speaking.

Ariel (Guest)
Thanks, excited to be here.

Mollie (Host)
Now that Minnesota's infrastructure grades are out, what was your initial reaction?

Ariel (Guest)
Wah, wah. Basically, the report card is updated on the state level every four years, and we got an overall grade exactly the same as four years ago. So it's kind of like, oh man, was my initial reaction, but also, I guess not surprised. So as a designer of the systems and someone who touches a lot of these different projects, I can feel it on the projects and from the clients as their bids come in and the costs come in and their backlog is starting to grow. So I feel the small successes and I also see the setbacks that they're facing. So I think the grade is really a reflection of what's actually going on.

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Mollie (Host)
I love how honest that is. Was there anything that just stood out that you thought throughout the grades?

Ariel (Guest)
I think there are a couple different themes that arose from the report card this year. And one is by far aging backlog and continually aging systems. So a lot of this infrastructure was put in place 50 to 100 years ago, and they weren't really designed for 50 to 100 year design life. So agencies, clients, communities are facing the challenge of like, do I repair and put all my money to that, or do I build this new thing that really sets us off into the future. So I think that's one theme that I've seen come out with all the different categories factored in. Another theme is water infrastructure and growing needs there. And we've seen some monumental progress there, like lead service line replacement. We've seen those projects happening all across the state. That's a huge win, making things better for our residents. You know, that impacts everyone from Duluth to Saint Paul. So that one interesting theme there in the water category. And that's, when I say water, I mean, you know, stormwater, wastewater, drinking water, all of those things. And then the third category you can kind of group them together in is transportation. And transportation, I think, continues to be an area of focus and really rising need. And so I think that's maybe how you can look at that third category of progress. So that's everything from transit to bridges to roads. And then there's some categories that blur the lines. So each one of those has a slightly different story to tell, but thinking about them collectively in that way, it's like the built environment. So it's the stuff you use without a second thought, specifically in the water category, like it rains, where does the water go? And then also you turn on your faucet in the morning, or in some communities in Minnesota, they don't turn on their faucet in the morning because they're on boil orders. So they cannot drink the water coming out of their tap. And that is something that just simply isn't acceptable. I'm a professional engineer. I took an oath to protect the health, the safety and the public, you know, welfare and not having safe drinking water is incredibly alarming to me that that could be a future state of ours. And maybe just one clarification is that the systems that we use are regulated by agencies that ensure their safety. And so these grades are really reflective of capacity, condition, funding, future need, resilience, all of those things in there. The agencies would stop things from happening unsafely, let's just say. So this is not that these things are unsafe, it's that We will continue to have less and less dollars going forward to fix these things that slip into the unsafe category instead of making a stronger and more resilient future state of Minnesota.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, I think there are positives and ways to look at that, like you were saying, but it is also something that we need to be aware of and need to keep track of, which is great that Minnesota is doing these reports and that they're looking back at this and grading and checking into all of their infrastructure. So it is important. Let's talk a little bit about the different categories. First of all, can you tell me which ones they are? And then historically, how has Minnesota done in those and how does that compare to where we're at now?

Ariel (Guest)
Yep. So the categories are aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, ports, public parks, roads, stormwater, transit, and wastewater. So stormwater is a new category for Minnesota. We've never seen that one on our state level report card. So the only thing we have to compare to there is a national report card grade of a D. And on the local level, we got a C. So most of our state level grades are in the C category, which means mediocre. An A, for example, is fit for the future. And a D, for example, is at risk and needs attention. And so what we really want to be at is basically a B, like we're good enough for now. We're doing well. We're making progress, incremental strides. And we're setting ourselves up for an eye on the future of an A, but realistically with grades of a C and some in the D range, like we're not gonna get to an A anytime soon. So without major investment. One thing I found super interesting is historically our best grade on the state level has been aviation. And that grade actually dropped slightly to a B–, and it was a B in 2022. And so I think having our best grade in the state slip is an alarm bell that should go off for everyone in the state. Like this is a system that has a potential to be modern, innovative, resilient, you know, super safe, keeping all those things in mind. And when that grade starts to drop like it did, we need to say what's going on here. And I think what's going on is the dollars aren't going as far as they used to. We have needs, the project costs are rising. And I'll give one maybe specific example of aviation so MSP MAC they put together a CIP for long term planning, and you know one of their hundred line items on their capital investment plan is, air handling unit replacement program. It's a program that happens every single year on their campus. It's not particularly shiny. There's no ribbon cutting associated with that project, but it's a multi-year over year investment in their aging needs. So they have a list of every single air handler on all their campuses, all their facilities, what year they were constructed in and what the issues are. So they are given the flexibility to pick off those urgent needs as needs change on a year over year basis, but that program exists every single year. And that's the kind of resilient future planning investment thought process that needs to go into every single one of these categories. Like some of the categories are in Cs and Ds, they don't even have data to be able to put together a report card grade for some of the categories. Part of the reason stormwater is newer is because the data really wasn't together. We can only grade what's publicly available. And so looking at these systems and asset management, Is the data there that we can even evaluate whether the systems are good or not? Do we have the right indexing and list of all the systems in here? And then we can start to learn from that, gather the data and improve. We're engineers, right? We love data. So we want to manipulate the data and tweak. If we spend our dollars here, what does that do over time? We can do these things, but not without good data. So asset management is a huge trait of something that the forward-leaning categories have good asset management systems.

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Mollie (Host)
Yeah, that makes sense. It's a lot about preparedness and getting all the data so that we can better position ourselves the next time this comes around. As you said, a lot of the categories landed in that C range. How should communities view that? Is this more of a warning sign or is it an opportunity to, like you said, build into a stronger future?

Ariel (Guest)
I mean, the C is mediocre. And so We look at these innovative technologies for our communities and newer systems coming forward and new emerging contaminants in our water, for example. And those are great shiny new objects, but at the same time, we continue to have these other non-shiny things that need to be addressed. And so what you'll see more and more with C's is that if something doesn't change, the trajectory of that is going to continue to go down. So think about it like your personal finances, and say you own a home and you have a furnace, and your furnace is getting older and nobody wants to replace the furnace. It's not a kitchen remodel. It's not very exciting. And it's not glamorous. It takes a lot of money and disruption to make that investment happen. But like, would you rather replace it right after your bonus comes in at work, right after your paycheck comes in at work, you give a contract or plan notice, you get it in their schedule in the off season, or would you rather get on their schedule on Easter Sunday, like no heat, middle of winter, emergency, 911, like families all over the house and freezing, Like these are the kinds of financial decisions that like we have fiscal responsibility for. And this is the kind of stuff like we see in our communities that's happening as they continue to make emergency projects happen because they have to, to keep things running. But it doesn't mean we can't use that money smarter so that you can do those ribbon cuttings and all those shiny new exciting initiatives.

Mollie (Host)
I love that analogy. I think every homeowner understands what it feels like to have to pay for those hidden furnace behind the wall type of things where you're like, look at my new roof. Isn't it great? But it's not as fun as the shiny ones like you're saying. So I get that. I think that is great advice for communities too, going forward is to, you know, take advantage of those, do them when it's not an emergency, and plan ahead for it. You also hit on this already and you gave a great example, but I want to dive a little bit deeper here. So for areas that scored higher, what are those communities or industries doing right that maybe others could learn from?

Ariel (Guest)
I think there's a lot to be said for education. A lot of people don't understand all that goes into these types of projects. So for example, a road project that goes through a community isn't always just a road project. It's deeply tied to stormwater, wastewater systems, water mains, like all the pipes underneath the road where our networks generally run along are all together. Those funding systems are all different, and so being able to leverage each one of those buckets in the right way to minimize taxpayer burden is exactly what those communities are doing, but it doesn't always get that headline. So another example from airports, which also can be seen in other categories is federal grants. So in airports, they have a 90% federal grant and the remaining 10% up is split between state contribution and local contribution. So really when you break down the cost of a new project, the local share or that local tax burden could be as low as 5%, because you get a lot of that relief from the federal partnership. So education is really important. When people see projects coming down the pipeline, they get sort of scared about the sticker shock and oh my gosh, this giant $4 million project is being funded by our local community. But really 5% of that 4 million is not that large of a burden for many communities. And so I think that just educating people on where your dollars are going to, like the reality is when an emergency situation happens, you have to repair something. Like think catastrophic, 35W bridge collapse, think dam failure. Like these are things that are very serious and aren't not going to happen. Like the fix is not going to not happen. So what will happen is those communities will divert all of their energy and their their funds towards that emergency thing that's safety related, but what you don't. is then other projects get taken off a list. So your to-do list keeps getting bigger and you just added a really big one to the top. And so I think helping educate people; like these projects aren't, aren't gonna stop and the need isn't going to go away. Like you can't choose to not do these things. Like we can't allow raw sewage to get discharged into the Mississippi as the headwaters of the Mississippi state. Like we can't ignore those things, they will continue to happen, but what will not continue to happen then is the stuff that's less safety related. So roads, for example. Roads have one of the lowest grades, a D+ that stayed the same as 2022 report card, which also showed a D+. And it's pretty obvious to me as a civil engineer why. It's because if a road fails, it's usually a pothole, it's a nuisance. But in the grand scheme of things, not that big of a deal. The community still can continue to function. And that's a pretty mild example. What people don't see, again, back to the education point is there's an invisible tax that all of us users pay sitting in traffic for an extreme amount of time or fixing our car if we get a flat tire going over a pothole or waiting on a bus for our other bus to come as, you know, we're on transit and we hit a pothole that blew our tire or whatever. So no matter what type of a user of these systems you are, you're paying an invisible tax for them, you know, to not be fixed. And so just educating people like on the state level, you could have over $500 back in your family's paycheck every single year for this invisible tax that you pay for these various systems without even realizing it. So I have a couple things I could do for $500 bucks a year. So hopefully, you know, people can just learn about this and start to see the reason behind it or the reason why people are raising local taxes is because there's nothing else left to give. And that's why.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, it sounds like a lot of your answers are continuously going back to prioritizing, planning, those kind of preemptive decision making skills. With the mix of results that we've gotten in our scorecard, our report card, how can communities take that thoughtful approach to prioritizing those implementations or improvements without being overwhelmed, right? You're saying the money is slim. We know funding is tight. So how do they decide where to put those dollars?

Ariel (Guest)
I think the communities are doing a really good job with the dollars they have. Like, most of the improvements to be made are really outside of those communities' control. They have a list of things they need repair. They prioritize them. They create a CIP surrounding those items, and they work towards that. And then they have emergencies pop up and they address those. But the problem is their pocketbook to begin with. It's misaligned with their needs. One example there is on a state level. So in Minnesota, we have the fourth largest number of public roadway miles in the US, which is insane, right? Like Minnesota, fourth largest in the country!? But, you know, it makes sense. We have a lot of roads. So in 2021, Minnesota was awarded an 80 million dollar local road improvement program fund source. So great. Let's use all the money. The applications totaled $835 million dollars. So 10x the available funds. So when you ask like what can communities do like they're doing everything they can to make wise decisions about their infrastructure. They need more. They need more than what they were given to start the year. They need 10x more in some cases.

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Mollie (Host)
Sometimes it can just be out of their hands then.

Ariel (Guest)
Yep. And in the case of rural communities in Minnesota, they simply don't have enough people in those communities to fund those projects like a wastewater treatment plant in Waconia, Minnesota, cost the same or very similar to a wastewater treatment plant in Tower, Minnesota. And the amount of taxpayers in those two cities are totally different. And so if they cannot leverage enough of the federal funds or the state funds or any funding program really, they have to raise their taxes in those communities or take out a loan for those projects. And the people who pay the burden is higher in those rural communities because there's not enough people to pay those bills. So what we're seeing is communities coming together to pay those bills on that front.

Mollie (Host)
No, that makes sense, unfortunately, but that makes sense. We're going to switch gears a little bit here and focus on leadership. So how can local leaders use this report card to support conversations with stakeholders, help secure the funding that you're talking about, and overall move projects forward?

Ariel (Guest)
Yeah, so that's exactly why the report card exists is We're civil engineers, we have the data, we know how to look at it and analyze it and compare it to a standard metric at the national level. So we're able to put together this report card and anyone can go on here and that's actually the intent, infrastructurereportcard.org and then you'll find Minnesota on the map, you click on it or whatever your state is, and then It gives you both the full report card, which is just the deep dive, all the figures and the graphs that the civil engineers love, but it has everything in there. And one thing I love is that, guess what, AI exists. So you can just take that report and feed it into your AI tool and just say, Hey, I am passionate about X, Y, and Z, and I live in this community. Tell me why I care about this report. And it will tell you, Oh, yeah, yeah, I see you like this or you're very invested in water infrastructure. Well, did you know? that these are the needs for our Minnesota communities, or it looks like you live downstream of a levee, you know, and then it'll tell you all the statistics about those in your area. So the data is meant to be taken and put in digestible sound bites report card grades, you know, and that you can talk about these like with your neighbors with, you know, your communities, with your legislators, like, these are not acceptable to me as a resident of Minnesota and the resident of the specific community. And this is what our ask is. And so there's very specific takeaways within the report of like what needs to change within. each report card section. And there are themes that are across the board, but then there's also things that are very specific to that category in terms of needs too. So that's how the report card is intended to be used on the national level. Your senators will hold that report card on, you know, the floor and say this is the need and this is why it's important. So it is a tool that is intended to be used for advocacy and education.

Mollie (Host)
I love that. I love that so much. So As we know, this comes out every four years. Naturally, people move on pretty quickly. Cycles move on pretty quickly. So after this initial attention fades, how can communities keep the momentum going and turn these insights into action?

Ariel (Guest)
So I think that just staying on top of mind, like these are systems that we use without thinking too much about until they fail, right? Like, oh crap, there is a sinkhole in downtown St. Paul and now my entire route to work and everything's been disrupted in this area and it impacts me. Like, okay, here's another event in the news. And then like to legislators, here's another event in the news. Did you see the headlines? Do you wanna be in the headlines for this? Like, no. There's, you know, it's not all negative humdrum stuff. It's exciting opportunity to make positive change that impacts so many different people. You know, access to clean water and protecting our lakes and rivers is something that everyone should care about. It impacts us all, no matter which way we vote. So. I think being able to come together on those topics and continue to stay in the public ear of importance, like every time a negative press event happens, it could have been prevented by more investment. And I think just because You know, it's not the shiniest new object every single time and the need continues to rise. Like, what if, crazy idea, we just went out there and advocated for one big push, think bonding bill times 10, one time, and what would that look like? It's time to throw the wild ideas on the table in terms of like, how can we change our trajectory here? And it's going to take really creative insight not only from civil engineers and policymakers, but just people that live in the community and say, Hey, I use this thing every day, have you thought about this? That's how good ideas happen is diverse thought and backgrounds of everybody weighing in on this. So just got to stay there. I think civil engineers can tend to be the quiet ones in the room that don't want to brag about what we do. We don't want to tout what we do too much, but I think we need to be in people's faces. These are not acceptable for our infrastructure. C's are not acceptable for our dams and our parks, our wastewater, stuff like that. So just have to keep on it, stay on it, and then really have partnerships with lobbying advocates who are better at this stuff than we are, who know how to make change happen. And like, you know, we can make it. We can move the needle a little bit sitting on our local boards and things like that, but we really need to come together as a community as a whole and say these things are important. This single event of this one-in-every-four-year report card release is important and it marks a concerning milestone in our infrastructure.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, print it out, put it on your wall, use it as backing when you have these situations where you want to help move something forward. I think that's all great advice. Where could a community start? So we just talked about some of it, right? Like understanding what we have currently, getting the data. What are the conversations that need to happen to get the ball rolling?

Ariel (Guest)
Yes. So I think that being loud about this and getting the word out, educating people, you know, this is what the report card is and this is what it means. And the more that your average Minnesotan knows, oh, yeah, I know exactly what the report card grade is for this category. I think the better off we are. So number one is education. And then where else to start? I mean, call your legislators every single day and tell them this is important to me. And, you know, maybe they'll make some improvements just to make you go away. And who cares if that's the reason they did it? They did it. But I think that one place to start specifically on the state level is passing a bonding bill every year. And like I said, the need is probably 10x what the bonding bill proposal is currently. But right now there is a bonding bill, you know, at play and it's always at risk. It's never guaranteed every year that Minnesota passes a bonding bill. And the reality is we need to pass one every year, if not something different. But for now, the mechanism in Minnesota to get these projects funded is the bonding bill. So that is the first thing that people should do is say, I support this. It's important to me. Have it dedicated for infrastructure. And then we can start looking at more innovative ideas for funding and asset management systems. Those are great steps.

Mollie (Host)
Well, Ariel, that was my last question here. So do you have any closing thoughts or anything you want to add about the Minnesota report card?

Ariel (Guest)
Yeah, I just, for everyone in the public and for those policymakers out there, I just want to tell you, you know, this stuff is very serious and very important to me, but also it presents an opportunity for you to build a legacy here in Minnesota. So great example of this is Eisenhower. And when he back to the Highway Act of 1956, it wasn't a quick fix. It was a generational year over year investment that people remember. Like history remembers those leaders that do this type of groundbreaking, earth shaking, like, innovative, forward thinking stuff. History is not made by policymakers who patch potholes. So if we want to continue to be pothole patchers like dominoes, let's go ahead and keep investing the same amount every single year. But if we want to build something for a better future, for better Minnesotans, better use of our taxpayer dollars, like we need to think differently about how we're doing these things. And I think that presents an awesome opportunity for a policymaker, you know, a public community advocate to stand up there and say like, hey, this is an exciting thing that we can all get behind and do this thing together. Let's do it.

Mollie (Host)
And hopefully we see a higher grade in four years.

Ariel (Guest)
Exactly. I'll be here in four years waiting to see how it happens, but hopefully, making the little waves in the meantime.

Mollie (Host)
Building a better world for all of us. Okay, well, perfect. So as we heard today, infrastructure report cards aren't just about where things stand. They're where communities can go next and it really helps give a roadmap. As Ariel shared, there is real progress happening and opportunities available. And with the right planning, prioritization, and investment, these grades can improve in meaningful ways. So thank you so much for tuning in to {Brief}ly Speaking. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to share it out and subscribe so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes. Thank you.