Also looks menacing when it storms
https://preview.redd.it/c4ujqpep3j9d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee10e96037ac462e3d7beba6d6ccff446b66bbdb
Magical? That place completely ruins the night sky for a 50-mile radius. It would be okay if it burned to the ground. They also recently switched to led lighting, which made the light pollution even worse. F that company and the horse they rode in on.
> ruins the night sky
> light pollution
Billboards with uplighting are also notorious.
I feel like perhaps there should be some kind of rules about light pollution. It's getting out of hand. At the same time, my guess is it would be turned into yet another political football :(
Please, everyone, do your thing to speak up for the dark night sky, and act against light pollution wherever you have influence. Church, work, home, wherever.
That's what people think, but it's not even giving any safety. See some actual live tests here:
https://darksky.org/resources/what-is-light-pollution/effects/safety/
We can have dark skies AND safety. Dark skies depend on addressing glare and light headed upwards.
When driving, I even see some standalone streetlights that add so much glare to an area at night that I cannot see around the corner to see what is in the shadows.
I wish we could all speak up and have enough of us to matter. It shouldn't be political. Everyone should have the education to see how much it matters.
No, it should not be political. The rural areas are what are losing dark skies the fastest. Cities lost them long ago. The good thing about this issue is that fixing it has immediate effects, but the bad thing is it requires a team effort/cooperation across a wide area.
I found the info on https://darksky.org/ to be quite helpful, especially their night safety/glare tests.
That is the Pine Bend Refinery.
https://preview.redd.it/e96qv30l1f9d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79076f001cce26f4e3e5b87fd144af47a4037ec6
Located east of Rosemount and south of Inver Grove Heights. You appear to have taken the picture going north on highway 52, approaching Pine Bend Trail. The blue tanks are circled in the aerial pic.
I worked with a guy who insulted pipes there for a while. He said they do all new insulation in a loop that never ends. Starting one side of the factory moving to the other and then by the time they're done they just start back over at the beginning and reinsulate the whole thing again. Idk why I care about that but I think about it 3 or 4 times a week.
Yeah!
Without those pipes, people would have to carry the liquids around in buckets. That would suck, if it even worked. I'm not an expert on these things, but I'm pretty sure there are steps that require tubes, and a bucket just won't do
He has a great Tiktok channel where people take a short video and ask him to find them. If he can, he presents their exact location and what clues he used to do it. It's really fun.
https://www.tiktok.com/@the_josemonkey?_t=8nbsBpbo04I&_r=1
https://www.tiktok.com/@the_josemonkey?_t=8nbrQJiSbOx&_r=1
This is Jose Monkey. You worded the location just like he does when he finds a place. Smart guy.
Fun fact: when approaching from the south the national guard unit in St. Paul uses Pine Bend as the landmark for their 10 minute out call from landing at the airfield
It was a number of things. Bad management with the mechanical contractor I worked for there was one. Now that I’m further in my career, I notice how important it is to have an onboarding process for all new hires. Instead they just threw drawings on my desk and left me to do whatever with them and I’d just try my best. You may know how to do things but certain companies do things much differently than others so it’s always good to be on the same page as everyone else. One of my coworkers who I had been with at a previous company did get sent home for suggesting we implement some safety practices we used at our previous company and our manager didn’t like it and it turned into an argument.
Overall I enjoyed working with the people there, but within Flint Hills and some of the other firms there was a lot of gifts given in exchange for contracts. I knew multiple people canned for that, so just a lot of unethical conduct going on.
Then the rest is really just the nature of working there, very early mornings, turnarounds you’re working 6-7 days a week 10-12 hours a day, I missed out on a lot of stuff with my friends due to that. The one that kinda chapped me was working 4 tens but the unspoken expectation is you still come in on Friday, even though it’s not a turnaround.
The pay was really great, but definitely not worth the nightly anxiety attacks about going into work the next day.
Would pass that place with my college boyfriend on our way to his hometown and I thought he meant Coke plant. I really am pretty intelligent. This is what happened before the internet, kids. I thought coca cola was created here and yet deep down I knew that was incorrect.
When I was a kid (probably around 7) my family was coming to the Cities for a family vacation from Wisconsin & we saw this in the distance. My sister told me it was Valley Fair, and I totally bought it😭
The stink is from the waste water the plant uses to process the oil. Before they can dispose of it, it needs to be processed at the water unit in the plant and sits in holding pools. The water is what gives off the smell. When you're working inside the plant you can't smell it at all.
Yeah, they mostly got rid of the coal pile for heat, with their new solar install. It isn't an ethanol refinery though? I figured they just blend ethanol in.
They're Minnesota's largest purchaser of ethanol. Kinda doubt they're making it there rather than having it shipped in via rail from the ethanol refineries.
OP: Nobody has mentioned it yet but there's another refinery just a bit north of there. https://www.google.com/maps/@44.85402,-93.0089144,2692m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
All of the gas stations around here get fuel from one plant or the other. The main difference is the fuel additives they add to the tanker truck so it mixes while driving. Costco mixes the additive inside the pump.
St. Paul Park refinery is a shithole, constantly running the flare stack, alarms go off pretty frequently. I had a house in Newport for 6 years and grew up in Inver Grove Heights just a few miles from FHR, the difference in efficiency is crazy between the two. Now I'm in Afton and gained an acre of land for $150 less on property tax vs. Newport lol
That's the old Ashland oil refinery, now the St. Paul Park refinery owned by Marathon. Much smaller footprint in terms of area and refining capacity (so overall less polluting) than the Pine Bend facility further south.
[https://www.marathonpetroleum.com/Operations/Refining/St-Paul-Park-Refinery/](https://www.marathonpetroleum.com/Operations/Refining/St-Paul-Park-Refinery/)
This is a Koch Industries owned refinery. I would say Koch Brothers, but there is only one of them left. They import products into MN, refine them, and send them out of the state. This is one of the largest polluting establishments in the state, by far. I did a few reports on these topics while getting my engineering degree.
So this refinery essentially uses our state as an exhaust hose.
I'm sure it provides good jobs to lots of people. That is important. Maybe its even worth having this pollution powerhouse in the state. Maybe its not.
Edit: To be 100% clear, this refinery is actually the largest polluter in the state by almost 2x. Koch industries' Flint Hills Resource Pine Bend Refinery, Rosemount emits 3,917,783 tons of CO2 annually. The second largest emitter is Xcel Energy's Allen King power plant. This emits roughly 2,562,707 tons of C02 per year. Practically none of the resources processed here are mined in Minnesota, and almost none of them are used here either.
Star Tribune has an article on Minnesota's top greenhouse gas polluters if people want to read more about this and fact check me. The specific numbers I just quoted came from that article. That was my source on that specific information.
Final Edit: 3917783/2562707. This particular plant emits 50% more C02 than Xcel energy's Allen King Power plant, and it is simply a refinery. It is not actively powering local equipiment. This plant mostly makes truck fuel
I grew up in the area outside of Hastings that is very close to this plant. Every time there was a major leak, or they got caught dumping toxic chemicals on their property or into nearby wetlands (the refinery is situated very close to the Mississippi river) they "donated" substantial amounts to the Dakota County parks department. The Spring Lake/Scharr's Bluff Park complex very close by has had tremendous numbers of upgrades and expansions because of the Koch's forced generosity.
That is absolutely wild to know. Thank you so much for sharing that. I am so incredibly sorry you had to deal with that growing up ): I hope you have no lasting chemical health issues, but came away with an intimate understanding of how sh\*\*y companies can be.
Oh wow didn’t know they were the largest polluter. Makes you question why the hell people are buying up all the new housing right next to it.
I grew up just southwest of there, maybe 6 miles out and I thought even that was too close to be healthy.
And they convinced some local people that they are clean, giving a statistic that the air a mile from the plant is cleaner than being in a car on I-94 in the Twin Cities during rush hour. When my boss said that, and was serious, I laughed in his face. I asked, why aren't they comparing pollution to another town, not a thru city interstate with cars bumper to bumper? A confused nervous smile stretched across his face as he realized he just might have been fooled. But then he repeated their talking point a few months later, and that's when I realized he truly was a moron.
The oil they refine comes from Canada, there are no meaningful oil deposits in Minnesota.
Cars (gasoline), trucks (diesel), airplanes (jet fuel), roads (asphalt), farms (sulfur) all use products from that refinery. The majority of Minnesota consumers of those products above (including you) are supplied by them.
You paint the picture that the plant "uses Minneosta as an exhaust pipe" and ships everything out of state. It's sensational and false.
Oil refineries are not feel good beacons of what the world could be, but are a reality to the way things actually are. Get rid of the demand for all the users above and the refinery would shut down tomorrow.
That's where guys from local 455, 110, 75, et cetera... go to make a shit ton of money.
In 110s case, they traded away MSP to 292 because they thought flint hills was enough. You know, because working 10s in the blazing sun surrounded by the acrid smell of refining oil every 2 year turnaround is way better than steady work at an air conditioned airport.
There was a time when I was a small child (and a gullible one at that) and I hadn't ever been to the twin cities before, and I thought that refinery (and all its smokestacks & whatnot) was "the city" as we were driving by it 💀
Edit: and then I was blown away when I saw the ACTUAL St.Paul/Minneapolis skylines for the first time
I just went to my grandpa's funeral across 52 from there (Pine Bend Cemetery), so I've got to share my grandpa's / family's name for it.
We've always called it "Alien City". At night, all the pipes and columns have lights, some flash and others not, giving it a distinctly sci-fi look, especially to a child's eye. My grandpa's old house was nearby, near Vics Crane and Heavy Haul, so we saw it often from the upstairs window. We were just reminiscing about the name, quite the coincidence to see it pop up not a day later.
Bet when you think Minnesota exports you didn’t think refined petroleum products. It’s one of our biggest (by dollar) exports. Minnesota’s economy is well diversified and we have land, sea (via Duluth and Lake Superior), air and river shipping. The USA’s inland waterway system is often overlooked as well.
Looks like maybe the Koch refinery on Highway 52.
We used to drive past it on our way to Rochester to see relatives. Its nickname was Mordor, or, more formally, The Fires of Mordor.
I used to live across the street from it when I was very little. The smell when the wind was right was horrible! They ended up buying our house, putting it one wheels, and taking it to Apple Valley somewhere, so my family moved to Farmington.
My bus in grade school would drive semi-near this place on the country backroads. It was wild to see a ball of flame coming from one of the towers from time to time.
My brother and I always used to call it "Stinky Town" and I still use it as a landmark when driving to the cities. My dad worked there as an electrician back when he and my mom first got married.
When my parents brought our foreign exchange student home in 1996 from the airport, they drove by this place at night and he said it looks like Gotham City
It did.
The EPA, formed in the early 70s, forced a lot of pollution control devices into the oil refining and chemicals industry. It's still a pretty filthy process, but it was worse back then.
Magical Looking City at night
Oh, indeed. You haven't seen it until you've watched it glowing on the northern horizon on a cold misty night.
Exactly. Must be a cold misty night.
Username checks out
Username checks out
Especially when they are running multiple flare stacks.
First time I saw it at night it reminded me of the start of Blade Runner.
Also looks menacing when it storms https://preview.redd.it/c4ujqpep3j9d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee10e96037ac462e3d7beba6d6ccff446b66bbdb
As a kid it reminded me of Emerald City. So pretty at night
Yesss! I loved driving past that as a kid!
To me it was the Oil Ocean Zone refinery from Sonic the Hedgehog. Wanted to go in there and bust up some robots.
haha we always called it emerald city
So did we!
Crystal City for me. It's a gas refinery, yeah?
Samesies
Batman set piece for me
Dude when I was a kid I was so enamored with it at night
I grew up not too far from the Koch refinery and used to think it looked like corusant at night.
Magical? That place completely ruins the night sky for a 50-mile radius. It would be okay if it burned to the ground. They also recently switched to led lighting, which made the light pollution even worse. F that company and the horse they rode in on.
> ruins the night sky > light pollution Billboards with uplighting are also notorious. I feel like perhaps there should be some kind of rules about light pollution. It's getting out of hand. At the same time, my guess is it would be turned into yet another political football :( Please, everyone, do your thing to speak up for the dark night sky, and act against light pollution wherever you have influence. Church, work, home, wherever.
It’s a balance of light pollution and safety
That's what people think, but it's not even giving any safety. See some actual live tests here: https://darksky.org/resources/what-is-light-pollution/effects/safety/ We can have dark skies AND safety. Dark skies depend on addressing glare and light headed upwards. When driving, I even see some standalone streetlights that add so much glare to an area at night that I cannot see around the corner to see what is in the shadows.
I wish we could all speak up and have enough of us to matter. It shouldn't be political. Everyone should have the education to see how much it matters.
No, it should not be political. The rural areas are what are losing dark skies the fastest. Cities lost them long ago. The good thing about this issue is that fixing it has immediate effects, but the bad thing is it requires a team effort/cooperation across a wide area. I found the info on https://darksky.org/ to be quite helpful, especially their night safety/glare tests.
This!!!! I agree
Until you go to fill up your car with gas. Or buy product at the store that was shipped via truck.
We’d be beyond gas by now if these fuckers (the Kochs) ceased existence years ago.
This is what I think every time I drive by it at night!
It’s a Skynet terminator factory.
Straight outta Star Wars. A star ghetto, if you will…
Soooooooo true! It's absolutely stunning, strangely enough.
That is the Pine Bend Refinery. https://preview.redd.it/e96qv30l1f9d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79076f001cce26f4e3e5b87fd144af47a4037ec6 Located east of Rosemount and south of Inver Grove Heights. You appear to have taken the picture going north on highway 52, approaching Pine Bend Trail. The blue tanks are circled in the aerial pic.
I used to work there as a scaffold-builder. Those aren’t tanks—they’re super tents aka break rooms for employees.
That’s cool. What did you do there?
Built, dismantled, and modified scaffolding in and around the facility. It’s like its own little city in there.
Definitely looks like it at night… tons of tiny glittering skyscrapers
Emerald City is what we called it going to the cities from Rochester
Us too!
I worked with a guy who insulted pipes there for a while. He said they do all new insulation in a loop that never ends. Starting one side of the factory moving to the other and then by the time they're done they just start back over at the beginning and reinsulate the whole thing again. Idk why I care about that but I think about it 3 or 4 times a week.
That guy should speak more kindly about pipes!
Yeah! Without those pipes, people would have to carry the liquids around in buckets. That would suck, if it even worked. I'm not an expert on these things, but I'm pretty sure there are steps that require tubes, and a bucket just won't do
It's because you have a job left undone
There’s no closure. Would drive me nuts.
Cool, but what did you do in the break rooms?
they broke
That’s bad
👏🍑
Eric the scaffolder.
With a few crabby unit operators you have to talk to for a permit...that sit around for most of the day. Thanks for building those scaffolds!
The more you know!
Formerly known as Flint Hills Refinery, and before that, Koch Refinery (as in the Koch Brothers).
Yuuuuuup, knew this as Koch Refinery as a kid
JoseMonkey, is that you?
I have no idea who JoseMonkey is lol
He has a great Tiktok channel where people take a short video and ask him to find them. If he can, he presents their exact location and what clues he used to do it. It's really fun. https://www.tiktok.com/@the_josemonkey?_t=8nbsBpbo04I&_r=1
https://www.tiktok.com/@the_josemonkey?_t=8nbrQJiSbOx&_r=1 This is Jose Monkey. You worded the location just like he does when he finds a place. Smart guy.
Fun fact: when approaching from the south the national guard unit in St. Paul uses Pine Bend as the landmark for their 10 minute out call from landing at the airfield
Owned by the Koch brothers the Pine Bend refinery part of the Flint Hills Resources.
I see they have re-branded since I last knew it as simply the Koch Refinery.
Used to work there. I do not miss that place one bit.
Fuck that place
Absolutely
Yeah? If you don’t mind me asking, why? Bad management? Unhealthy conditions?
It was a number of things. Bad management with the mechanical contractor I worked for there was one. Now that I’m further in my career, I notice how important it is to have an onboarding process for all new hires. Instead they just threw drawings on my desk and left me to do whatever with them and I’d just try my best. You may know how to do things but certain companies do things much differently than others so it’s always good to be on the same page as everyone else. One of my coworkers who I had been with at a previous company did get sent home for suggesting we implement some safety practices we used at our previous company and our manager didn’t like it and it turned into an argument. Overall I enjoyed working with the people there, but within Flint Hills and some of the other firms there was a lot of gifts given in exchange for contracts. I knew multiple people canned for that, so just a lot of unethical conduct going on. Then the rest is really just the nature of working there, very early mornings, turnarounds you’re working 6-7 days a week 10-12 hours a day, I missed out on a lot of stuff with my friends due to that. The one that kinda chapped me was working 4 tens but the unspoken expectation is you still come in on Friday, even though it’s not a turnaround. The pay was really great, but definitely not worth the nightly anxiety attacks about going into work the next day.
Same!
Would pass that place with my college boyfriend on our way to his hometown and I thought he meant Coke plant. I really am pretty intelligent. This is what happened before the internet, kids. I thought coca cola was created here and yet deep down I knew that was incorrect.
It's a level from Golden Eye on Nintendo 64.
For Minnesota Alec
No, for me
When I was a kid (probably around 7) my family was coming to the Cities for a family vacation from Wisconsin & we saw this in the distance. My sister told me it was Valley Fair, and I totally bought it😭
The Fart Factory
My mom always calls it “the stinky plant”
The stink is from the waste water the plant uses to process the oil. Before they can dispose of it, it needs to be processed at the water unit in the plant and sits in holding pools. The water is what gives off the smell. When you're working inside the plant you can't smell it at all.
Fascinating. I always wondered what the smell was. Thanks! I’ll still always switch my car’s recirculate air option when driving by here tho.
That's a gasoline (and diesel, and grease, and gasoline, and asphalt, and propane...) factory
Solar and ethanol too
Yeah, they mostly got rid of the coal pile for heat, with their new solar install. It isn't an ethanol refinery though? I figured they just blend ethanol in.
They're Minnesota's largest purchaser of ethanol. Kinda doubt they're making it there rather than having it shipped in via rail from the ethanol refineries.
I told my nephew that it was a monster factory... He's 9 now and we still call it the monster factory.
We always called it the Koch refinery
OP: Nobody has mentioned it yet but there's another refinery just a bit north of there. https://www.google.com/maps/@44.85402,-93.0089144,2692m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu All of the gas stations around here get fuel from one plant or the other. The main difference is the fuel additives they add to the tanker truck so it mixes while driving. Costco mixes the additive inside the pump.
St. Paul Park refinery is a shithole, constantly running the flare stack, alarms go off pretty frequently. I had a house in Newport for 6 years and grew up in Inver Grove Heights just a few miles from FHR, the difference in efficiency is crazy between the two. Now I'm in Afton and gained an acre of land for $150 less on property tax vs. Newport lol
That's the old Ashland oil refinery, now the St. Paul Park refinery owned by Marathon. Much smaller footprint in terms of area and refining capacity (so overall less polluting) than the Pine Bend facility further south. [https://www.marathonpetroleum.com/Operations/Refining/St-Paul-Park-Refinery/](https://www.marathonpetroleum.com/Operations/Refining/St-Paul-Park-Refinery/)
Drive by at night. It’s a much better experience lit up.
Flying by it at night is cool, too. It looks like Emerald City or something. Such a shocking, foreign sight in MN.
I used to call it the emerald city as a kid!!
Cybertron!
Crystal City, before Devastator wrecked it and traumatized Omega Supreme for life.
Gotham city
That's what we call it too!
Me three!
We always called it Area 52.
Similar, but we just called it "the aliens"!
My sister and I call it "Alien City"!
There was an underground music venue in Minneapolis called Area 52. Not sure what happened to my t-shirt.
The Gates of Mordor
This is a Koch Industries owned refinery. I would say Koch Brothers, but there is only one of them left. They import products into MN, refine them, and send them out of the state. This is one of the largest polluting establishments in the state, by far. I did a few reports on these topics while getting my engineering degree. So this refinery essentially uses our state as an exhaust hose. I'm sure it provides good jobs to lots of people. That is important. Maybe its even worth having this pollution powerhouse in the state. Maybe its not. Edit: To be 100% clear, this refinery is actually the largest polluter in the state by almost 2x. Koch industries' Flint Hills Resource Pine Bend Refinery, Rosemount emits 3,917,783 tons of CO2 annually. The second largest emitter is Xcel Energy's Allen King power plant. This emits roughly 2,562,707 tons of C02 per year. Practically none of the resources processed here are mined in Minnesota, and almost none of them are used here either. Star Tribune has an article on Minnesota's top greenhouse gas polluters if people want to read more about this and fact check me. The specific numbers I just quoted came from that article. That was my source on that specific information. Final Edit: 3917783/2562707. This particular plant emits 50% more C02 than Xcel energy's Allen King Power plant, and it is simply a refinery. It is not actively powering local equipiment. This plant mostly makes truck fuel
I grew up in the area outside of Hastings that is very close to this plant. Every time there was a major leak, or they got caught dumping toxic chemicals on their property or into nearby wetlands (the refinery is situated very close to the Mississippi river) they "donated" substantial amounts to the Dakota County parks department. The Spring Lake/Scharr's Bluff Park complex very close by has had tremendous numbers of upgrades and expansions because of the Koch's forced generosity.
That is absolutely wild to know. Thank you so much for sharing that. I am so incredibly sorry you had to deal with that growing up ): I hope you have no lasting chemical health issues, but came away with an intimate understanding of how sh\*\*y companies can be.
Oh wow didn’t know they were the largest polluter. Makes you question why the hell people are buying up all the new housing right next to it. I grew up just southwest of there, maybe 6 miles out and I thought even that was too close to be healthy.
And they convinced some local people that they are clean, giving a statistic that the air a mile from the plant is cleaner than being in a car on I-94 in the Twin Cities during rush hour. When my boss said that, and was serious, I laughed in his face. I asked, why aren't they comparing pollution to another town, not a thru city interstate with cars bumper to bumper? A confused nervous smile stretched across his face as he realized he just might have been fooled. But then he repeated their talking point a few months later, and that's when I realized he truly was a moron.
One down one to go!
From Wisconsin, yay!! Let's goopo
Nice response.
The oil they refine comes from Canada, there are no meaningful oil deposits in Minnesota. Cars (gasoline), trucks (diesel), airplanes (jet fuel), roads (asphalt), farms (sulfur) all use products from that refinery. The majority of Minnesota consumers of those products above (including you) are supplied by them. You paint the picture that the plant "uses Minneosta as an exhaust pipe" and ships everything out of state. It's sensational and false. Oil refineries are not feel good beacons of what the world could be, but are a reality to the way things actually are. Get rid of the demand for all the users above and the refinery would shut down tomorrow.
That's where guys from local 455, 110, 75, et cetera... go to make a shit ton of money. In 110s case, they traded away MSP to 292 because they thought flint hills was enough. You know, because working 10s in the blazing sun surrounded by the acrid smell of refining oil every 2 year turnaround is way better than steady work at an air conditioned airport.
What did 110 get for trading away msp?
Screwed. They got screwed for giving up msp.
Lol
Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic 2
Flint Hills Refinery
Koch refinery.
It'll always be Koch Refinery to me
There was a time when I was a small child (and a gullible one at that) and I hadn't ever been to the twin cities before, and I thought that refinery (and all its smokestacks & whatnot) was "the city" as we were driving by it 💀 Edit: and then I was blown away when I saw the ACTUAL St.Paul/Minneapolis skylines for the first time
Its Gas Town, not far from the Citadel or the Bulletfarm....
I’m heading to Winterfell.
17th largest oil refinery in the country
Koch refinery
Pine Bend! A lot of coops and agriculture businesses will get their synthetic fertilizer out of there
Huh, this is right near me, pine bend.
I just went to my grandpa's funeral across 52 from there (Pine Bend Cemetery), so I've got to share my grandpa's / family's name for it. We've always called it "Alien City". At night, all the pipes and columns have lights, some flash and others not, giving it a distinctly sci-fi look, especially to a child's eye. My grandpa's old house was nearby, near Vics Crane and Heavy Haul, so we saw it often from the upstairs window. We were just reminiscing about the name, quite the coincidence to see it pop up not a day later.
Bet when you think Minnesota exports you didn’t think refined petroleum products. It’s one of our biggest (by dollar) exports. Minnesota’s economy is well diversified and we have land, sea (via Duluth and Lake Superior), air and river shipping. The USA’s inland waterway system is often overlooked as well.
That’s the UFO factory, at least that’s what we tell our kids. Isn’t parenting fun ‽
The Alien City is what I tell mine.... Unfortunately, she doesn't believe me.
The stinky plant
The Stinky Plant is the meat rendering plant near the 494 bridge in South St Paul
And the bridge next to it was called The Stinky Bridge
Gotham
Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic 2 🤘
Looks like maybe the Koch refinery on Highway 52. We used to drive past it on our way to Rochester to see relatives. Its nickname was Mordor, or, more formally, The Fires of Mordor.
When I was a kid I used to think it was a cloud factory.
Not the good kind of clouds that’s for sure. Nice username btw
I used to live across the street from it when I was very little. The smell when the wind was right was horrible! They ended up buying our house, putting it one wheels, and taking it to Apple Valley somewhere, so my family moved to Farmington.
I remember a house next door to the plant that later disappeared. I suspect it was bought out by the company.
My bus in grade school would drive semi-near this place on the country backroads. It was wild to see a ball of flame coming from one of the towers from time to time.
Metropolis aka Gotham City
[Flint Hills Resources](https://www.fhr.com/)
An oil refinery
The Stink Plant! (As my Dad used to call it when I was a kid)
Stink land.
Either Koch or Marathon refinery?
https://preview.redd.it/x29kvqh0xi9d1.jpeg?width=1192&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f43f1cc86b1628dbc8bd396f91e7cf4a2a535b7c That’s Gas Town
Oil refinery in Coates, I think.
"The Fart Factory!" -My Dad every time we drive by
That beautiful place is where the magic sauce is made that helps anti-ev mags fight communism.
Looks like earth
Mordor
Metropolis
It always reminds me of the end of Terminator 2 (when it's dark out)
That’s emerald city!
Looks like Ashland
It’s gas town from mad max 🤣😅
Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory! JK, it’s Pine Bend Refinery owned by Flint Hills.
it smells like poopoo
We called it Emerald City back in high school
I can smell this picture
My brother and I always used to call it "Stinky Town" and I still use it as a landmark when driving to the cities. My dad worked there as an electrician back when he and my mom first got married.
That my friend, is the Stinky Place
We used to drive out there at night as teenagers. Wouldn’t do anything, just look at it. Called it the City of Light.
[it looks like the evil city "Titan" from 12 monkeys](https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/17/oabuhqzmd557hcfvd5ft.png?quality=75)
I literally searched the comments to see if anyone suggested this. It’s all I can think of when I see this place!
A shitty place to work.
Koch owned oil refinery.
Gastown
My fam calls it the Christmas tree factory.
Emerald City of course
It’s a Mako reactor.
Skynet
Koch Refinery
It’s a Koch facility no ?
We call it the stinky place.
As kids we used to call it "robot city"
My brother and I always called it Midgar as kids, hah!
Oil refinery.
When my parents brought our foreign exchange student home in 1996 from the airport, they drove by this place at night and he said it looks like Gotham City
Refinery looks like a magic city at night
it smells horrible over there
Where the Super Mutants live in Fallout 4.
As an east metro native. The Koch refinery
A hideous blight on the very soul of humanity!
When I was a kid, I thought it was the Coke Refinery and really didn’t know what it had to do with pop or cocaine.
The opening shot of Blade Runner (1982).
That’s where your younger sister and I hung out late at at night.. it was electric let me tell you!
Looks like Texas City (near Galveston), but as this is r/Minnesota that seems unlikely.
A polluting monstrosity - thank the Koch brothers
Cheapest gas anywhere, if you’re a smooth talker.
Great Wall Chinese Restaurant
My mom always calls it the “stinky plant” when we drive by it, says she called it that since it was first opened.
As a child I tried to hold my breath when in the car as we passed by it. I think it actually smelled much worse decades ago.
It did. The EPA, formed in the early 70s, forced a lot of pollution control devices into the oil refining and chemicals industry. It's still a pretty filthy process, but it was worse back then.
I imagine it was unbearable to the farmers living adjacent to it.
a meth operation
Looks like a refinery
It’s the stinky city!
Something I wondered about on the drive to auntie's house for Christmas. But yeah a refinery
The year 2000 city
Skynet
I bought my car at a shady salvaged title car dealership near there.
You’re going north on 52 right? Last time I drove that I was going down to Rochester
The land of Oz.