Bruening Rock President Acknowledges Stormwater Mistakes, Questions Minnesota Fine After Years of Corrective Work

"Did you hear what happened?" Get the scoop with DecorahNews.com HARMONY, Minn. & DECORAH—Bruening Rock Products President Greg Bruening said the company accepts responsibility for mistakes made during a years-long effort to address stormwater runoff at its Big Spring Quarry, but believes recent media coverage of a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency enforcement action failed to capture the broader history of the project. The MPCA fined Bruening Rock Products $16,410 after a June 4, 2025, inspection found evidence that sediment from ponded stormwater had entered Camp Creek, a designated trout stream. The agency also found deficiencies involving sediment controls, stormwater monitoring, reporting and maintenance at the quarry. The company paid $16,410 of an $18,165 administrative penalty assessed in June, according to the MPCA records previously reported by DecorahNews.com. The remaining $1,755 was forgiven after Bruening completed required corrective actions, and the MPCA subsequently closed the corrective actions associated with the enforcement order and a November 2025 notice of violation. Bruening said the enforcement action arose while the company was already working with MPCA and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources on a much larger project intended to control runoff from the quarry. "We inherited a mess, and we didn't realize that, you know, the mess that we had at the time," Bruening said in an interview with DecorahNews.com Reporter Alexander Rosenow. "We thought getting to quarry housekeeping was our main priority, but the stormwater issues got overlooked." Bruening Rock acquired the quarry around 2010, and according to Bruening, the site had accumulated piles of rubble and dirt along with other "housekeeping problems" that the company spent years addressing. The quarry had operated for decades before Bruening Rock acquired it. In a Sept. 28 written response, the company confirmed aggregate producers had leased the site for more than 75 years and that Bruening acquired it from a previous operator "around 2010". The company said it began improving the site's overall management after taking over. A Stormwater Problem The stormwater issue predates the 2025 inspection that resulted in the fine. According to Bruening, the MPCA visited the quarry in 2020 and raised concerns about water pooling at the northern end of the site. The concern initially centered on the temperature of water leaving the quarry and entering Camp Creek. Bruening said MPCA personnel monitored the temperature difference between quarry runoff and the creek for about a year. He said the difference "generally ranged from 1 to 2 degrees". The company's written response similarly says the MPCA raised concerns in 2020 that retained water could warm 1 to 2 degrees above Camp Creek before flowing into the stream. The company said it requested factual evidence that fish were being affected but had not received such evidence to its knowledge. Bruening said "no evidence of fish deaths or other complaints about effects on the stream had been brought to his attention" during the company's operation of the quarry. The MPCA's recent enforcement action, however, concerned sediment discharge and stormwater permit compliance rather than the earlier temperature concern. DecorahNews.com previously reported that the agency's June 2025 inspection found evidence of sediment entering Camp Creek through notches in berms used to drain ponded stormwater. The agency also found that berms adjacent to the creek lacked vegetation and appropriate erosion and sediment controls. Bruening acknowledged that sediment did escape during construction of the stormwater-control system. As the company built berms and detention areas, he said, workers "temporarily cut notches into some berms" because there was nowhere else for accumulated water to go. "That was our responsibility," Bruening said. "I wasn't aware our guys were doing that. It was a mistake on our part." He said workers were attempting to prevent the quarry from flooding while the containment cells were still being constructed. The temporary releases were not supposed to occur, he said, and he was not aware they were happening at the time. "Once we found out, we got it corrected," Bruening said. The company also discovered that some of the initial berms were constructed with material that allowed water to seep through them. Those berms were subsequently removed and rebuilt with clay material, he said. The MPCA's findings were more extensive than the physical sediment controls. The agency said Bruening Rock had failed to establish required sediment-control practices, lacked documentation identifying materials and activities that could be sources of pollutants, and had not completed required testing and maintenance, including stormwater sample collection. Bruening acknowledged that some required stormwater testing was not completed. He said employees were supposed to conduct testing after "certain rainfall events", but there had been ambiguity within the company about where testing should occur and what should be tested. "We should have done a better job on that particular," Bruening said. "Our goal was to get these dikes and this project completed as quick as we could. And so some of those items got overlooked on our part, which is our fault." A Years-Long Construction Project The stormwater-control project ultimately developed into a major construction effort involving hundreds of feet of control berms and multiple detention ponds. The company's plan directs runoff into holding cells inside the quarry, where sediment can settle before water is released toward the creek. The company said the quarry covers roughly 30 acres and that the project required drilling, blasting and removing thousands of tons of rock to create sufficient capacity in the holding cells. Bruening said the company hired a local engineering firm to develop the plan and then worked through revisions with Minnesota regulators. He said the plan took more than two years to receive approval after being submitted to the Minnesota agencies. The company's written response describes more than three years of work between its engineer and the MPCA before an approved plan was reached. Once construction began, the company built two primary sediment-control ponds and a network of berms designed to direct runoff away from the old northern collection area. Bruening said the old northern area is now closed off to runoff. "All the runoff right now is contained," he said, adding that one additional detention pond remains to be constructed as a safeguard for exceptionally heavy rainfall events. The company's written response said approximately 90% of the overall plan was complete as of Sept. 28, with the final holding cell expected to be added this fall. That remaining construction is separate from the corrective actions required under the MPCA enforcement order, which the agency has determined are officially complete. The Big Springs Quarry operates under Minnesota industrial stormwater permit MNG490115. MPCA watershed documents identify it as a "crushed and broken limestone quarry associated with Camp Creek". Bruening Questions the Fine Bruening said the company was surprised to receive a fine after years of working with state agencies on the stormwater project. "We thought we were on top of everything," he said. "We thought we had a good working relationship." He said the company contacted regulators after learning of the penalty because he believed the company's work with the agencies had created an understanding that completing the project would resolve the matter without a fine. Bruening said the company was disappointed that the enforcement action came after the stormwater project had been underway for years. The MPCA says penalty calculations consider factors including the seriousness of a violation, potential harm to human health or the environment, the company's history of noncompliance and any economic benefit gained from failing to comply with environmental laws. Bruening said he was not given an explanation of how the $16,410 figure was calculated. "It looks like they just pulled something out of air because that's such an odd number," he said. "I'm sure they use some kind of a formula and so on, but ... they never offered any information as to how that amount was derived." The company's written response specifically asks the MPCA to explain how the penalty was determined, how previously completed work was considered and why the agency's public release did not discuss the larger stormwater project. Environmental Effects Bruening also questioned whether the sediment discharge caused measurable harm to Camp Creek or its trout population. He said the company had not received complaints about fish problems during its ownership of the quarry and iterated he had not been presented with scientific evidence showing that the earlier temperature difference harmed fish. The MPCA's enforcement announcement described Camp Creek as a designated trout stream but did not state that the agency had documented a fish kill or other specific biological damage from the incident. The agency's announcement focused on the discharge and violations of stormwater requirements. DecorahNews.com previously reported that the applicable stormwater permit includes a total suspended solids, or TSS, intervention limit of 65 milligrams per liter. Elevated suspended sediment can make water cloudy and cause material to settle on a streambed, potentially affecting aquatic habitat. Bruening said the company accepts that sediment escaped during the construction process but characterized the incident as occurring during an effort to correct a longstanding runoff problem. "There was some issues as a construction process was going on that shouldn't have happened," he said. "They did." 'The Untold Story' Bruening said the company decided to respond publicly because he believed initial headlines about the enforcement action gave an incomplete impression of the company and its work. In its written response, Bruening Rock said the MPCA's Sept. 21 release highlighted the trout stream and fine but did not describe the years of work the company had already undertaken under the approved stormwater plan. The company said the MPCA had expressed interest in using the project's design as a pilot for other sites in Minnesota. "We're not this bad company trying to be a bad neighbor" Bruening said. "We don't want to be a bad neighbor to anyone." Bruening said the company employs more than 30 people in the southern Minnesota area and that its employees take pride in maintaining its quarry sites. He also said the company has received awards for quarry beautification at other locations. Bruening did not dispute that the MPCA identified violations at Big Spring Quarry. Instead, he said the enforcement action should be viewed alongside the company's efforts to address the site's longstanding stormwater problems. "Did we make some mistakes along the way? Yes. We absolutely did," Bruening said. "But it wasn't malice on our part." The MPCA's enforcement action has now been closed after the required corrective measures were completed. The company plans to finish the remaining portion of its larger stormwater-control project this fall. "We're quite pleased with how it turned out," Bruening said. "The systems functioning, it's working, it's corrected the issues." He said the company hopes the project will allow Bruening Rock and the surrounding community to move forward while maintaining the controls designed to prevent future sediment discharges into Camp Creek. Your community has a story to tell. Help us keep telling it.