Carver County aggregate distribution facility pitched.

Byline: Brian Johnson

The Twin Cities needs high-quality crushed rock to improve its network of roads and bridges, and an Iowa-based supplier says it stands ready to help with a planned industrial park in Carver County.

Pattison Sand Co. plans to break ground this fall on a new rail facility and industrial park that will receive trainloads of crushed rock and other aggregates from the company's 750-acre quarry in northern Iowa.

A linchpin of the $2.8 million project is a new rail spur to serve the 50-acre industrial park along Highway 212 at Salem Avenue in rural Benton Township. The site is roughly a half mile east of Norwood Young America.

Pattison has the approvals it needs to begin construction and is completing land acquisition, said Joe White, Pattison's manager of Minnesota operations. Construction is expected to wrap up next spring.

"Everything is approved. We are all permitted and set up to go. We are just getting the property closing done, then we need to start construction," White said in an interview.

The project comes as the Minnesota Department of Transportation plans an expansion of Highway 212 in the area. A flurry of new development is likely to piggyback on the expansion and the rail facility will "feed into that," according to Pattison.

White said the aggregate will arrive at the Carver County site by rail, thus reducing wear and tear on Minnesota's roads. Each rail car carries about five semi-trailer loads of materials, the company said.

Road construction is the end use for the majority of aggregates produced in Minnesota, according to Sunde Engineering's 2017 report to the Legislative Aggregate Resources Task Force.

A mile of four-lane interstate highway requires about 85,000 tons of aggregate, according to the report.

Curt Turgeon, state pavement engineer at MnDOT, said it's good to have another source of aggregate to serve the state. Even so, "I would not say we are having a crisis," he added.

Regional sources of aggregate include quarries in St. Cloud, New Ulm, and Dresser, Wisconsin, Turgeon said. But some of the choice rock is no longer accessible because it's buried under new...