Related Links: Desalination Advocates are Pinning Hopes on New Plant in California Mining firms BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto are moving ahead on a planned $3.43-billion water-supply project for the Escondida copper mine in Chile's high desert. The upgrade will include the largest seawater reverse-osmosis desalination plant in the Americas, says Black & Veatch, which announced on Oct. 29 its selection as engineer-of-record for the facility and related marine works. The plant is set to produce about 220,000 cu meters of water a day.The two mining firms are the majority owners of Escondida, the world's largest copper mine, located 3,100
Photo Courtesy Federal Emergency Management Agency Fargo wants to make reinforcement of temporary levees part of the past. Related Links: Risks Pile Up At Canada's Muskrat Falls Hydro Army Corps Plan Would Tame Red River, Prevent 100-Year Flood Flood Control on the Red River as a Complex Environmental Decision System On Oct. 24, the cities of Fargo, N.D., and Moorhead, Minn., moved one step closer to solving a perennial problem within the region: Red River Basin flooding. The U.S. House of Representatives authorized a plan to build nearly $2 billion worth of aqueducts and dams, as well as a 35-mile
Photo by Nelson Barkerman Multi-trade teams work together in the assembly plant for a 32-story modular tower. Related Links: Developer Bruce C. Ratner Digs Into Difficult Deals to Alter the Urban Lanscape Forest City Ratner Skanska USA Building Modular Construction in Multi-trade Environment Set to Grow, Says FMI Study Things are beginning to stack up nicely at the 100,000-sq-ft assembly plant for the latest far-out adventure of developer Forest City Ratner Cos.—modular high-rise residential construction. On Nov. 1, the first 27 of 930 modules moved off the line for FCRC's 32-story B2 Bklyn tower at the nearby Atlantic Yards development.Last
Related Links: N.Y. Governor's Office Press Release on TIFIA Loan Approval New Tappan Zee Bridge Work Begins DOT Moves To Streamline TIFIA Loan Decisions The U.S. Dept. of Transportation has approved a $1.6-billion loan for the replacement of New York's Tappan Zee Bridge. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) made the announcement Oct. 31, calling it "the largest loan the U.S. Dept. of Transportation has ever made for any project like this."The loan was made through the DOT's Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program. Established in 1998, TIFIA has ramped up its lending recently, spurred by last year's
Related Links: People News: Edwards Elevated to Lead Black & Veatch as COO The U.S. natural-gas sector will continue to grow, but market and regulatory forces are putting a damper on the prospects for big-dollar gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas export facilities, Black & Veatch says in a new report.According to B&V’s “2013 Strategic Direction in the North American Natural Gas Industry,” the gas industry—boosted immeasurably by shale gas discoveries and by technology improvements in extracting gas from shale—is “in the midst of significant growing pains.”The report, released October 31, says more than 95% of those surveyed for the
Related Links: LA Times: Mayor Garcetti Suggests Czar for Earthquake Preparedness Simpson Gumpertz & Heger California Institute of Technology Renewed earthquake paranoia has hit Los Angeles since an Oct. 12 report in the Los Angeles Times labeled more than 1,000 buildings as "at risk" for collapse in a quake. In response, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) promised to appoint a quake "czar" to determine if retrofits of the city's older reinforced-concrete structures are needed.The Times' list—compiled through building-permit research and an owner survey—includes mostly reinforced-concrete buildings engineered between the 1960s and the mid-1980s. "This class of building exists in
Courtesy DOE Eleven offshore wind projects, totaling more than 3,800 MW, are in advanced stages of development. Related Links: First $1.8B Leg of U.S. Offshore Wind Transmission Link Is Set Statoil Pulls Plug on Maine Offshore Wind Project, but U. of Maine Venture Proceeds Despite low natural-gas prices that are dampening the competitiveness of renewables, the U.S. offshore-wind industry continues to gain ground. Eleven projects, totaling 3,824 megawatts, are in “advanced” stages of development, according to a U.S. Dept. of Energy study by Navigant Consulting.The 11 projects have either received approval for a lease in federal or state waters, conducted
Malaysia plans to spend $50 billion over the next seven years on the development of a network to include both urban rapid transit and high-speed rail, and global construction firms are ready to help. A 150-kilometer urban mass rapid-transit system is already under construction, with a slated 2017 opening. A high-speed-rail system linking Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, planned for a 2020 launch, will go out to bid in late 2014. “We expect this to be a very transparent, open bidding system in which companies from all over the world are free to participate,” stated Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in
Related Links: Busan-Geoje Link Longest Immersed Tube Tunnel Planned Immersed-tube tunnels are rare birds. Only a handful are under construction in the world each year. They consist of large tubes, constructed in sections often more than 100 meters in length, which are floated into position in a waterway, sunk into position, and joined with watertight seals. They are always placed in a trench on the bottom of the river or bay. They are constructed of steel or reinforced concrete. [Slideshow: The 10 Longest Immersed-Tube Tunnels] “While bridges are generally cheaper to build, immersed-tube tunnels are usually located at sites where
Related Links: Growth in India's Infrastructure Markets Projected With the U.S. recently lodging a formal complaint with the World Trade Council against India on entry barriers to companies, an India-U.S. Infrastructure Fund that was set up in 2010 is still in a wait-and-see mode.Meanwhile, in India's reformed business environment, the Chinese, South Koreans and Malaysians are investing. Recent reports indicate overseas investors have shelled out close to $2 billion in the past year, despite hard economic conditions. However, many U.S. firms are shying away from investing in India's infrastructure sector.Past problems have created a poor perception of work in India.
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