Related Links: Portland, Ore.'s Big Pipe Winds Up 20-Year Program To Control Overflows The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago has reached a Clean Water Act settlement with the federal government to upgrade its combined sewer system.Under the consent decree, announced on Dec. 14, the MWRD will complete a tunnel and reservoir plan to increase its capacity to handle stormwater and address combined sewer overflows.The project, which involves building two reservoirs with a combined storage capacity of 18 billion gallons, will be completed in stages in 2015, 2017 and 2029.According to the MWRD, the district already has spent about
New York state's recently passed legislation to allow design-build delivery for certain infrastructure projects may be more a sign of the economically troubled times than a whole-hearted vote for this alternative project delivery system, say some industry players."We've seen quite a number of states in the last few years that have passed legislation allowing for public-private partnerships, and, if there are public-private partnership laws, design-build really has to be a part of them," says Mike Schneider, managing partner at Los Angeles-based InfraConsult LLC, which specializes in transportation consulting.Helping to drive this trend is the scarcity of federal infrastructure funding coupled
Photo: ODOT Unstable earth and lateral loads have stymied completion of a U.S. 20 project. After millions of dollars in costs and years of delays, the Oregon Dept. of Transportation has labeled as a failure the landslide mitigation on an unfinished four-mile stretch of U.S. 20 between Pioneer Mountain and Eddyville.In an attempt to bypass a windy 10-mile roadway prone to landslide damage, Yaquina River Constructors—whose parent company is Watsonville, Calif.-based Granite Construction Co.—planned to build a total of 11 bridges for its design-build contract. Seven are now complete. The remaining four bridges were to range from 600 ft to
Dorsch Gruppe Medina terminal is set to be Saudi Arabia's first privatized airport project. KPF Six global teams are vying for the estimated $6.8-billion Midfield Airport Terminal project in Abu Dhabi. One of the Persian Gulf region's first public-private-partnership contracts—and the first for an airport in Saudi Arabia—has been awarded to a consortium led by Istanbul-based TAV Airports Holding AS and its local partners, Al Rajhi Holding Group and Saudi Oger Ltd.The consortium’s estimated $1-billion to $1.5-billion investment to expand the 30-year-old Prince Mohammad Bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Medina will be recouped through a concession to operate the airport
COURTESY STATOIL Statoil's 2.3-MW demonstration turbine off the Norwegian coast. Related Links: Maine Offshore Wind Study Statoil Hywind Demonstration Description Statoil, developer of the world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine, is reporting good performance on its 2.3-MW test project near the North Sea. The Norwegian company is targeting the Gulf of Maine as a site for a 12-MW floating-turbine test wind farm, despite the tough U.S. environment for wind-energy development. If constructed, this would be the first floating wind turbine farm in the U.S.“We chose the coast of Maine because of good wind conditions, deep waters and proximity to electricity
Courtesy of Kitimat LNG The Kitimat LNG facility is one of a handful seeking to export Canada's natural gas to Asian markets. Courtesy of Kitimat LNG The proposed $5.7-billion Kitimat LNG export terminal received a 50-year export license from Canada's National Energy Board. Related Links: Israel Taps Italian Firm To Build Floating Offshore LNG Terminal DOE OKs Terminal LNG Export Two Canadian energy companies are closer to developing export facilities for liquefied natural gas in the Pacific Northwest, driven by burgeoning demand for natural gas in Asia and vast North American natural-gas reserves. Other companies are also queuing up to
Related Links: National Academies' press release (with link to full report) "Oil-Spill Panel Seeks Industry, Federal Actions," enr.com Jan. 12, 2011 A new report on the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil-well blowout concludes that industry and regulators had a “misplaced trust” in the blowout preventer used by the Deepwater Horizon rig.Like many other reports about the Gulf Coast disaster, the National Academy of Engineering/National Research Council study, released on Dec. 14, concludes that the accident, which killed 11 rig workers and spewed more than four million barrels of oil into the Gulf, was caused by a combination of factors.But
N/A Work on $20-billion chemical complex addition at Saudi site will start in 2012. A Dow Chemical Co.-Saudi Aramco joint venture has already contracted out about half of the $20-billion capital investment for its world-scale petrochemical complex in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. It expects to award all engineering, procurement and construction contracts by mid-2012, a project executive said last month. Aramco Vice President Abdulaziz Al Judaimi added that construction would start in the third quarter.Jacobs Engineering Group on Nov. 8 won the EPC management contract to provide front-end engineering design, overall construction management and other services. The contract value was not
Related Links: Lawmakers, Restoration Task Force, Outline Priorities for Gulf Japan Eyes Milestone in Overcoming Nuclear Disaster "Nimble" is not a word often associated with the nuclear industry. But following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster on March 11, nuclear experts from multiple countries and companies flew to the aid of the Tokyo Electric Power Corp. to help bring its nuclear plant under control and evaluate and mitigate the damage.Babcock and Wilcox, Charlotte, N.C., provided a remotely operated vehicle to inspect the plant's damage. The Energy Dept.'s Idaho National Laboratories sent a robot designed to withstand high levels of radiation. Paris-based Areva
A decade after work began on the $12.2-billion waste treatment plant at the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Hanford site in southeastern Washington—set to be the world's largest to treat "mixed" nuclear and chemical wastes—the 65-acre "vit plant" complex still faces uncertainty in cost and design, despite completion of 85% of its engineering and more than 60% of its construction.The difficulty of designing the facilities needed to turn Hanford's 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive and chemical wastes into vitrified glass has DOE and its main contractor, Frederick, Md.-based Bechtel National, cautious as they stare down a 2013 design completion deadline
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