Related Links: Toxic Chemical Spill Fouls Drinking Water Supply in Charleston, W. Va. No One's Job: West Virginia's Forbidden Waters Following the Jan. 9 toxic spill that shut down drinking-water supplies to 300,000 people, West Virginia regulators have cited Freedom Industries Inc. for numerous violations. Lawyers are filing lawsuits against the company, and state and federal probes are continuing.Water service returned to about 75% of West Virginia American Water customers in Charleston by Jan. 16, though pregnant women were advised by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to continue drinking bottled water because little is known about effects of 4-methylcyclohexane
Related Links: U.K.'s High Hopes For HS 2.0 The construction of tunnels and stations beneath central London as part of a $24-billion Crossrail project has hit the halfway mark on time and budget. The successes are feeding into ongoing planning for over $60 billion worth of high-speed rail."The industry is enjoying a renaissance and a reputation for delivering these projects on time and cost [to] a very, very high quality," says Andrew Wolstenholme, chief executive officer of Crossrail Ltd. (CRL), the city's project owner. Noting lessons learned on construction for the London Olympics in 2012, the Heathrow airport's Terminal Five
Image Courtesy of Nalcor Energy The $7.8-billion Muskrat Falls project would ensure a reliable power supply to the province, backers say. Opponents see it as a dubious scheme with little benefit. Related Links: Risks Pile Up At Canada's Muskrat Falls Hydro Provincial Fact Sheet: Muskrat Falls Rolling blackouts and power outages throughout Canada's Newfoundland and Labrador province in January have prompted the Board of Commissioners of Public Utilities (PUB) to launch a probe into Nalcor Energy and its management of power generation and transmission infrastructure.PUB's announcement of the investigation comes after a number of public complaints claimed that utility corporations
Related Links: Environmental Integrity Report Efforts to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus discharges in the Chesapeake Bay's watershed states have made a noticeable impact, according to a recent report, and more improvements are expected in the coming years. Citing Environmental Protection Agency data, the Environmental Integrity Project reports that discharges of nitrogen from industrial facilities and sewage treatment plants declined about 3 million tons, or about 6.5%, in 2012 compared to the previous year."There's been a lot of money spent, and nitrogen discharges have gone down pretty significantly," says Eric Schaeffer, executive director of EIP.Discharges in Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of
Related Links: U.K. Crossrail Project Hits Halfway Mark With a price tag of around $66 billion, the U.K.'s next high-speed-rail project is pressuring engineers to minimize costs while maintaining quality. As they prepare to procure the $28.1-billion first phase between London and Birmingham, officials are urging the international construction community to bring innovative ideas to the 10-year program.MCNAUGHTON"Here is a stream of work that gives you the incentive to invest in techniques, construction equipment and in skills of people at all levels," says Andrew McNaughton, technical director of High Speed 2 Ltd, the government's project company. "Things like tunneling have
Photo by Getty Images Workers will strip tiles from two curved facades and exposed steel will be painted white until a permanent solution is found. With tiles falling off its shell-like facades, remedial work started recently to safeguard the eight-year-old Queen Sofia Palace of Arts opera house in Valencia, Spain.Crews are stripping loose tiles from the two 4,000-sq-meter curved facades and painting the exposed steel white until a permanent solution is found for the centerpiece of Valencia's City of Arts and Science.The opera house's facades are formed by steel frames covered with metal plate, onto which some 20,000 irregularly shaped,
Rendering Courtesy of Millennium Partners The California Geological Survey's map of the Hollywood fault and its connected splays and traces show proposed Millennium Hollywood (above) and the underway BLVD 6200 (below) projects atops splays of the active fault. Photo by Nicholas Zeman for ENR Related Links: Suit Against Los Angeles Triggers Debate Over Building on Hollywood Fault California Geological Survey Millennium Hollywood BLVD 6200 The California Geological Survey's recently released map of active splays around the 10-mile Hollywood fault in Los Angeles shows two projects—one proposed and one under construction—in violation of state law because they are sited atop splays
Related Links: New Post-Construction Stormwater Rule Could be Delayed NRDC Report A new report evaluates some of green infrastructure's benefits—green roofs, rain gardens, tree plantings, permeable pavements—to commercial property owners and their tenants.The December 2013 report, produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), looked at a range of benefits: energy savings, higher rents and property values, reductions in water bills and local financial incentives, such as tax credits and stormwater fee credits.The report found that the benefit value over 40 years could range from $2 million to $24 million for individual buildings.Larry Levine, senior attorney for NRDC's water program,
Related Links: Shale Plays Pump Up Pipeline Sector Bakken Shale Field Pushing East Coast Rail Terminal Projects Some are calling for the progress of pipeline projects in the aftermath of the Dec. 30 derailment and explosion of a Burlington Northern Sante Fe freight train carrying crude oil from the Bakken shale formation through Casselton, N.D. It was the fourth such incident in North America in 2013.In October, the Fraser Institute, a public-policy think tank in Calgary, Alberta, released a report titled "Intermodal Transport in the Safety of Oil," written by Kenneth Green. "Truck and rail have a higher rate of
Related Links: Spain's Solar Pullback Threatens Pocketbooks China's Moratorium on Solar Produciton Gives Hope Abroad From 2008 to 2012, Hawaiian Electric Company saw solar rooftop system installations double each year. As adoption again nearly doubled in 2013, 10% of the utility's customers had solar systems feeding into its grid. Hawaiian Electric recently announced a temporary slow-down of adding more solar energy onto some of the circuits on its grid. Other U.S. utilities also are imposing deterrents to small-scale solar.Hawaiian residents pay an average of 37¢ per kWh, triple the national average. But a 6-kWh solar installation in Hawaii can produce
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