At least three electric utilities are seeking to retrofit aging coal-fueled plants to burn biomass in order to keep costs down, meet renewable portfolio standards and avoid having to comply with new emissions rules. “A lot of these coal plants are entering the twilight of their years,” says Dave O’Connor, manager of combustion performance for the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif. Repowering “is much cheaper than building a new greenfield plant and is a very cost-effective way to give them a new purpose.” Photo: Georgia Power Co. Georgia Power has received permission for Plant Mitchell’s $103-million conversion. O’Connor
Citizens of Fargo, N.D., and neighboring Moorhead, Minn., appear to have dodged another bullet, but only after an heroic, all-hands effort in late March in advance of floodwaters that ultimately surpassed a 1997 record flood. With little more than a week’s notice, an army of federal, state and local resources, along with sandbag-packing volunteers, built a maze of temporary dikes atop existing levees to withstand the onslaught of the rising Red River. Photo: U.S. Air Force Rapid erection of 38 miles of HESCO barriers helped raise levees in Fargo by 4 ft. At ENR press time, floodwaters in Fargo were
The National Gallery of Art’s East Building in Washington, D.C., is preparing for an emergency facelift. Some of the marble panels on its exterior are tilting outward, indicating problems with its veneer panel support system, according to Deborah Ziska, gallery spokeswoman. The panels are attached to the building’s exterior with stainless-steel anchor and clip supports. Local structural engineering firm Robert Silman Associates recommended the removal of all the gallery’s 16,200 panels, reinstallation with new supports and installation of new gaskets between panels. Photo: National Gallery of Art
Federal infrastructure stimulus announced in February could pave the way to faster development at Sacramento’s 244-acre Railyards. The long-planned mixed-use project owned by S. Thomas Enterprises was selected by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments to receive $20 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds. The stimulus funds will push work on track realignment and road building ahead by six months, according to Suheil Totah, vice president of Thomas Enterprises. “This is tremendously significant for the project because the money wasn’t expected and now we will be able to move forward on items that had been put on
Four executives with one of the largest construction firms in South America, Camargo Correa, were arrested by Brazilian police Wednesday in connection with a year-long corruption probe. A total of ten employees of the firm were arrested as federal police carried out a series of raids on the company’s offices in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero — part of an investigation named Operation Sand Castle. Photo: C.J. Schexnayder The Campos Novos dam in southern Brazil built by Camargo Correa and completed in 2006. Investigators with Brazil’s federal prosecutor’s office specializing in financial crimes say Camargo Correa was laundering money
A federal judge in New Orleans ruled on March 20 that a civil lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers brought by homeowners who suffered flood damage in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 can proceed. The suit claims the Corps is liable for levee failures along the Mississippi River to Gulf Outlet, a navigation channel. The Corps has immunity from claims arising from flood-control failures but does not have the same protection with respect to navigation infrastructure. Judge Stanwood J. Duval Jr. said “substantial questions” have been raised. Damages could reach $100 billion.
The American Society of Civil Engineers released its comprehensive 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure on March 25. ASCE released a preliminary report of the national letter-grade findings on Jan. 28, assigning the nation’s roads, bridges, water systems and other critical infrastructure a cumulative grade of D and noting a five-year investment need of $2.2 trillion. The version now out breaks down the data in state-by-state detail. See www.asce.org/reportcard.
Warm-mix asphalt is hot. Asphalt industry officials believe warm mix, porous asphalt pavement and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) will come to dominate paving in the next few years because the products offer lower costs and higher environmental benefits than traditional hot mixes. Photo: Pat Monroe Photo: Aileen Cho / ENR Attendance was up at World of Asphalt 2009, fueled by warm-mix applications. Related Links: World of Asphalt 2009: Warm All Over “The warm-mix revolution is starting to spread,” said Matthew Corrigan, asphalt pavement engineer with the Federal Highway Administration, addressing attendees of the Asphalt Pavement Conference on March 9 in
Alow-profile 350-meter-long, 15-m-wide suspension bridge designed by a U.K.-French team will carry part of a 25.5-kilometer planned light-rail system, called Metro West, across Dublin’s Liffey River to the city’s northeast corner. The Irish government’s Railway Procurement Agency, which oversaw design competition, wanted a low-key design. “Because it’s sensitive, we didn’t want [tall] towers,” says Davood Liaghat, technical director at Buro Happold Consultants Ltd., Bath, U.K. The structural firm, with Paris-based Explorations Architecture S.A., won RPA’s com-petition and a $190,000 prize. Celtic Crossing. Suspension bridge will maintain a context-sensitive profile. “We decided to lean the towers back to [match] the tree
In a twist on the proverb “Set a thief to catch a thief,” physicists at the University of Texas at Austin have designed a system to facilitate the disposal of spent nuclear fuel that combines nuclear fission with fusion. The hybrid system will destroy 99% of the spent fuel, and the waste that remains will be less toxic than the spent fuel now accumulating in storage at nuclear powerplants around the country, the researchers say. President Barack Obama’s decision to halt further development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository in Nevada and “devise a new strategy toward nuclear-waste disposal” has
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