Related Links: Multi-Year Bank Rehab Secures Las Vegas Wash Lake Mead Intake Project Manges Risk Proactively Lake Mead, the reservoir for drinking water in Las Vegas, is in trouble. The city and its suburbs have long been challenged by a limited water supply, but the very real effects of climate change are exacerbating and accelerating already dry conditions. The region's 2 million residents depend almost entirely on the Colorado River, yet its lake-stored flows are set to dwindle significantly in the next few decades.Located about 30 miles from the city's downtown, Lake Mead's depth has sunk to perilously low levels—
Related Links: The Last Straw: Lake Mead Third Intake Digs Deep While several monumental tasks need to be completed on the Lake Mead Intake No. 3, Erika Moonin, project manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, says neither its contractors nor owner anticipate future issues, thanks to preconstruction risk management. "We had a very strong approach to risk management," she says. "We had open communication meetings between the owner and the construction manager, and we had experts, including our peer-review committee."The contract also included allowance accounts that provided tunnelers leeway when dealing with "potentially variable items," mainly pre-excavation grouting and
Photo Courtesy of TTC A $2.5-billion subway extension is facing at least two years of delay. Related Links: Ten Drives, Four TBMs Build Toronto Subway Extension TTC Report The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), seeking to minimize existing schedule overruns, has entered into an $80-million sole-source management agreement with Bechtel Canada for the remainder of the $2.5-billion Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension (TYSSE), which will provide an 8.6- kilometer link between the city of Toronto and its neighboring authority, the Regional Municipality of York.In March, Sameh Ghaly, TTC chief capital officer, and Andy Bertolo, chief project manager, were axed. Then, the city
Related Links: Virginia Investigates Controversial I-460 Toll Road Plan VDOT Statement on Termination of Route 460 Contract The short, troubled life of the U.S. Route 460 Corridor Improvements project apparently has ended. The Virginia Dept. of Transportation this month announced that it will terminate its $1.4-billion design-build contract with US Mobility Partners to build the 55-mile limited-access highway in southeast Virginia.LAYNE"The Commonwealth has determined it is in the taxpayers' best interest to terminate the contract," said state Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne in a statement. VDOT's attempts to work with the team on a revised version of the project "proved unsuccessful."
Related Links: 'Flawed Design' Caused Failure of Mount Polley Mine's Earthen Dam, Say Investigators Mount Polley Dam Failure Raises Bar for Pebble Mine Backers Imperial Metals Corp., owner of the mine that caused Canada's worst mining disaster in history, has started limited production at an even bigger mine, which could be a threat to Alaska's $2-billion annual salmon and tourism business.Meanwhile, Imperial has applied for a temporary restart of Mount Polley Mine, where a tailings storage pond failed in August 2014, spewing 4.3 billion gallons of water and 10.3 million cu yd of mine tailings and construction waste into two
Related Links: Edmonton Bridge Contractors Straighten Buckled Girders Until March 16, everything was coming together very nicely on the new bridge at 102nd Avenue over Groat Road in Edmonton, Alberta. Two days earlier, the crew from fabricator and erector Supreme Steel had placed and bolted the first of seven central girder sections that would complete the span. Winds interrupted work for awhile, but by Sunday night crews resumed girder placement until six sections were up. Then, at about 2:15 a.m. on Monday, March 16, four of the girders buckled laterally, three deflecting several feet and leaving interior braces bent or
EarthCam The site of the new Waterdale Bridge in Edmonton, where steel arch sections will be assembled when all sections arrive. Photo from City of Edmonton website Steel sections for the Walterdale Bridge appear in an image that appears to be taken at Daewoo's fabrication shop in Korea. Related Links: Edmonton's Other Big Bridge Headache Announcement of Walterdale Bridge Delay by Edmonton Before an Edmonton bridge's steel girders buckled in March, officials in the Canadian city and project contractors were already facing a long delay on another, more important bridge project there.The construction team working on the Alberta provincial capital's
Related Links: Drought in Western U.S. Has Water Utilities Considering a Range of Solutions U.S. Drought Monitor In the weeks since California Gov. Gerry Brown (D) issued an executive order mandating a 25% reduction in water use for all urban water users to address what scientists predict could become the worst drought in 1,000 years, the state's energy commission approved water-appliance standards that would dramatically increase performance requirements for building components such as toilets, faucets and urinals."The technology is there, and we're eager to install more-efficient fixtures in buildings," says Courtney Lorenz, director of environmental management at Skanska USA. In
Photo Courtesy of SaskPower Officials say the Boundary Dam project demonstrates that CCS is viable. Related Links: Clean Coal--Is Carbon Capture and Sequestration Fossil Fuels' Best Hope? (ENR, subscription) Saskatchewan Community Wind Report on Boundary Dam CSS Facility The world's first full-scale carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) facility of its kind at a commercial coal plant is performing better than expected, officials from SaskPower, the Canadian facility that owns the plant, said at a recent meeting in Washington, D.C.CCS has been touted by the Obama administration and advocates around the globe as a way to enable coal to remain part
Related Links: Duke Energy Settles Ash Spill for $102 Million Duke Energy Starts Ash Cleanup as N.C. Considers Tighter Regs Calling a proposed $25.1-million state fine for coal-ash-induced ground- water contamination at a retired coal plant near Wilmington, N.C., "unprecedented" and "improper," Duke Energy on April 9 filed an appeal aimed at dismissing the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources' proposed penalty. The fine is not related to the 2014 coal-ash spill at the utility's Dan River powerplant near Eden, N.C.In its appeal, Duke called the levy "an extreme example of [an] improper civil penalty" and alleged that the DENR
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