Many years ago—well before the 2008 financial crisis—I sat in a meeting where someone representing the tiny town of Pine Island, Minnesota (pop. ~3,300), gave a presentation showing how they were going to attract billions of dollars of biotech industry, and tens of thousands of new people, through a development near the city’s highway interchange.

I remember thinking, “This is utter bull,” but I couldn’t identify another skeptic in this crowd of technical professionals. I’m sure there were some; the project was total madness and I can’t have been the only one who knew it. But in the crazy days of the housing boom, anything seemed possible.

The idea that 25,000 biotech jobs would just appear in a town 20 minutes north of Rochester (home of the Mayo Clinic) was enough to induce the Minnesota Department of Transportation and partners to spend $34 million building a new interchange. Poor timing meant the project landed in the depths of the recession, rendering this “bridge to nowhere” a proverbial white elephant for the various governments involved.

Where did the money for the Elk Run junction come from? Well, Olmsted County chipped in $8.5 million, including $2 million in pass-through federal money. Through MnDOT, the Greater Minnesota Interchange Fund was the source for $14.6 million, Statewide Corridor funds for $10 million and $2.6 million from general funds. The city of Pine Island and Tower Development turned over some real estate, with an estimated value of $3.65 million.

I’ve driven by the site quite a few times since. It’s pretty desolate. Here’s how the local paper—the Post Bulletin, Minnesota Newspaper Association’s 2019 Daily Newspaper of the Year—described it earlier this year:

Visions of a billion-dollar center of biotechnology never came to fruition. The state-funded, $45 million U.S. 52 interchange sees zero traffic, because it essentially goes nowhere. Over the years, Pine Island was left to deal with a quagmire of delinquent property taxes and potential state fines.

The Prairie Island Indian Community recently purchased the failed site. The Prairie Island community has its own complicated history. They received assistance from the state in compensation for failure to remove radioactive waste from a nuclear facility next to the reservation. The hope is that homes for dislocated community members will be going up soon in Pine Island, with the potential for a future casino rumored. I’m very sympathetic to the plight of the Prairie Island Indian Community, but this whole thing feels like the mashup of two wrongs resulting in something not quite right.

I’m giving you this history because this was in the news last week:

The Pine Island Waste Water Treatment Plant pumped roughly 800,000 gallons of rainwater-diluted, but untreated, raw sewage into the middle fork of the Zumbro river over the course of 48 hours. The decision came after heavy rainfalls hit the area, leading officials to make a tough call on Saturday.

For context, an 800,000 gallon spill would be enough to fill 1-gallon jugs lined side by side for nearly 70 miles. It’s enough to cover a football field with two feet of water. It’s not an environmental catastrophe (any engineer will tell you that dilution is the solution to pollution) but nonetheless, this kind of thing shouldn’t happen. Certainly, there is an urgent need to address the problem because there is guaranteed to be more rainfall in the future.

How does a town of 3,300—one that very recently aspired to be 8 to 10 times that size—end up unable to handle sewage in a rainfall event? The answer is as predictable as it is sad: systems are old and there is no money to fix them. As reported:

The Pine Island plant is 70 years old, and upgrades are necessary but cost is a huge factor. “Keeping in mind that a lot of wastewater infrastructure upgrades is millions of dollars that than you know tax payers need to be able to support their community in making that investment to prevent you know wastewater releases basement back-up,” [Aaron] Luckstein [of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency] said. Pine Island officials tell KTTC they are looking into building a new plant, but that is still a long way off.

There’s a part of me that believes the state of Minnesota should levy a huge fine on Pine Island for allowing their system to degrade to this point. Yet another part of me wants to know who has really brought about this disaster. Pine Island’s lust for easy growth certainly distracted them from competently performing the basics. There is no doubt the city, and to a degree the residents, hold some accountability.

Yet, the state, by handing out tens of millions gambling on growth, was a major player in that distraction. If the state isn’t there with handouts for a new interchange, does the city pursue the shiny silver-bullet project? If the state is doing its job overseeing pollution discharges, does the city pursue the shiny silver-bullet project? Or are they forced to come to grips with their deferred maintenance problem sooner?