Photo by AP Wideworld Red worms appeared in a small town's water supply after flies slipped through sand filters. Related Links: Oklahoma City To Upgrade Its Water, Wastewater Networks Video: Don't Drink the Water Residents in Colcord, Okla., are still observing a water-use advisory as town officials flush out tiny red worms that made their way into the city's drinking-water supply last month.The town's approximately 800 residents and local businesses were told not to use tap water for cooking or drinking and, instead, use bottled water until state and local officials are certain the worm problem has been resolved.The red
Photo by AP Wideworld Power Down Fans at the World Cup basketball trials await illumination during the power outage. Related Links: Venezuelans Skeptical of Power Sabotage Claims Chavez Successor Must Pay Down Debt To Sustain Building Program Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro, charging sabotage by his political opponents, is calling for a special security force to protect the country's electrical system after a failure on the power grid plunged more than 70% of the country into darkness this month.Opposition leaders, denying the allegation, said it was merely an effort by the government to shift blame for the incident, which happened shortly
Photos Courtesy of Parsons Corp. Unbraced tied-arch structure was built off-site, then rolled and floated to its final destination over the Mississippi River. Related Links: Builders Say Precast Concrete Network Arch Bridge Is A First Massive Railroad Truss Rolls Into Place A new iconic crossing for Hastings, Minn., is nearing completion. The job used self-propelled modal transporters, barges, skid tracks and strand jacks to set what officials say is North America's longest free-standing, unbraced tied-arch bridge structure.The structure was not even in the original plans to replace the two-lane continuous steel-arch truss over the Mississippi River. The Minnesota Dept. of
Related Links: Obama Announces $7-Billion 'Power Africa' Plan Efforts To Light Up Africa Gain Momentum Ajoint venture of Spain's Grupo Clavijo and Germany's Schletter GmbH has won a contract to install photovoltaic racks for South Africa's 96-MW Jasper Solar Energy Project, which counts Google as one of its investors.It is Google's first renewable-energy play on the continent, where PV energy projects are emerging fast. A consortium, led by California-based SolarReserve, is developing the site at which Yingli solar panels are to be installed under an engineering, procurement and con-struction contract, led by Spain-based Iberdrola Engineering and South Africa's Group Five.
Related Links: Broad Array of Offshore Firms Provide Help at Fukushima (subscribers only) Japan Earmarks Funds for Cleanup TEPCO Crews Try To Cool Damaged Reactors at Fukushima Powerplant (subscribers only) Thirty months after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that touched off multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern Japan, the government has decided the crisis is too big a job for plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. to manage.On Sept. 3, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that, instead of "ad hoc approaches," the government would formulate a fundamental solution. The government also announced it would
Related Links: Rerouted Keystone Pipeline Path Back for Another Round The US Shale Boom Is Termed Globally Unique, But With Worldwide Impacts Williams Partners L.P. will have to wait six months to learn whether federal regulators will approve its proposed 3.17-mile natural-gas pipeline project off the coast of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. Williams had planned to start work on the $182-million Rockaway Delivery Lateral Project this month. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said in August that it would complete the project's final environmental impact statement on Feb. 28, 2014, with a 90-day authorization decision deadline slated for
Related Links: Vegas Hotel Is Like a Giant Sun Reflector, Says Pool Visitor Sandblasters Tone Down Glare-Prone Disney Concert Hall With the current fashion of curvaceous buildings, the need to shed light on solar glare is becoming an increasingly important design consideration. London's "Walkie Talkie" skyscraper is the latest to reflect "death rays" that partially melted a car and almost set fire to a barbershop's entrance.As Londoners basked in an uncharacteristically sunny summer day, the concave elevation of the incomplete 37-floor building at 20 Fenchurch St. focused solar rays onto the opposite sidewalk, melting part of a Jaguar's roof and
Related Links: Price Tag for Bay Delta Water Plan Swells to $24.5 billion Bay Delta Conservation Plan Homepage The California Dept. of Water Resources has revised again the state's proposed plan to convey water from the northern part of the state to the southern part. The proposed changes, released on Aug. 15, would shrink by 50% the total permanent footprint of the project and shift more than 400 acres of permanent and temporary construction impacts from private to public lands.The $25-billion draft Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) for California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has gone through a number of changes over
Image Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects Global firms will manage billions in construction for ambitious Saudi metro program. Related Links: Saudi Arabia Upgrading Passenger Rail And Freight Service Global Teams Win Massive Contracts For Saudi Subway Lines Several global consulting firms have won plum contracts for a six-line, 131-station, 106-mile-long mass- transit system for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.Riyadh Metro Transit Consultants, a joint venture of Parsons Corp., Egis and Systra, won a $556-million contract to manage the first two packages— including lines Nos. 1, 2 and 3 and totaling 104 kilometers—for the ArRiyadh Development Authority. The team will oversee construction of
Photos Courtesy of the Texas Dept. of Transportation TxDOT plans to mend torn-up roads, such as the I-37 frontage road in Live Oak County (above), by converting them to "high-end unpaved roads" (below). Related Links: Texas Department of Transportation Thanks to the energy boom in central and west Texas, heavy trucks carrying oil and natural gas are tearing up rural farm-to-market roadways that were never intended to bear such 100,000-lb loads. Since the Texas Dept. of Transportation doesn't have the funding to maintain more than 80,000 miles of roads across the Lone Star State, it plans to "unpave" 83 miles
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