Related Links: First Report of the Jefferson County Sewer System Receiver Officials of Jefferson County, Ala., and the state are negotiating with creditors for another week while they try to avoid a $4.1-billion bankruptcy filing. All it took to reach this point is bad spending on a sewer system overhaul, bad financing and changing of the county's debt structure. If county officials decide to seek protection from creditors, it may become the biggest municipal bankruptcy ever. Jefferson County includes Birmingham, Alabama's biggest city.The Jefferson County Commission and creditors agreed July 28 to postpone until Aug. 4 a decision on filing after creditors
Related Links: Missouri Basin Flood of 2011 map and infographic The Missouri River, engorged by record rains and snowfall, has flooded thousands of acres in the Midwest and will remain out of its usual channel until October, says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' water management chief.The Corps has reduced outflow from earlier record levels at five of its six dams on the Missouri, but water continues to pour out of Gavins Point Dam in Yankton, S.D., at a rate of 160,000 cu ft per second until Aug. 1, when the rate is scheduled to drop gradually.As the eight states
A congressional battle that blocked passage of a new stopgap Federal Aviation Administration bill has caused the FAA to issue stop-work orders on about 80 airport engineering and construction contracts, totaling more than $790 million, around the country.The failure to pass a new authorization bill before the old one expired on July 22 has also tied up an additional $2.5 billion in infrastructure funds, as FAA put a hold on awarding new grants from its Airport Improvement Program (AIP). Moreover, the agency furloughed about 4,000 of its 47,000 workers.The closing of the AIP grant window is a bigger problem for
Mass. Department of Transportation crews have completed installation of high-strength support straps on approximately 25,000 tunnel light fixtures in the Boston Big Dig Central Artery tunnels as a safety measure.The system was developed as a temporary three-to-five-year solution to the tunnel light corrosion issues while engineers evaluate options for a long-term solution, the agency noted in a July 25 press release..Paul Norton, principal at TranSystems in Boston, which served as transportation consultant for Mass DOT, says the high-strength polymer support strapping wraps around the entire lighting fixture and engages the steel Unistrut structure. “We studied 10 alternatives based on cost,
At a time when cutbacks threaten surface transportation programs across the U.S., a new economic analysis from the American Society of Civil Engineers says that simply maintaining current levels of investment won't be enough to avert long-term losses in productivity, jobs and household income.Drawing on widely used transportation planning models and consumer and industry data, “Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation,” forecasts that, within the next decade, the added costs of dealing with deteriorating highways, bridges and transit systems will result in the loss of more than 870,000 jobs and cut the nation's
Energy-industrial contractor CB&I had a good month of July on the heels of several large EPC contracts, particularly a $2.3-billion joint-venture award for a mechanical, electrical and instrumentation contract on the estimated $19-billion Gorgon liquified-natural-gas, or LNG project in Australia.Awarded to the joint venture of Netherlands-based CB&I and Australia-based Kentz, the work includes gas processing, compression and associated utilities, CB&I says. Set to finish in 2015, the project, a development of several international energy companies, could produce 15 million tons of gas a year. CB&I has a 65% stake in the JV. “This will be the largest LNG export facility
The cities of Binghamton and Johnson City, N.Y., and their Joint Sewer Board have filed a $20-million suit against 12 companies, charging them with professional negligence and malpractice after a 100-ft wall collapsed in May.The suit, filed July 22 in Broome County Supreme Court, also cites breach of contract and seeks “repair and replacement of various design and construction errors at the Binghamton-Johnson City Joint Sewage Treatment Plant, including, but not limited to, replacement of collapsed exterior walls, defects in design and construction of the Phase III improvements, methanol and BAF systems, removal of debris, replacement of filtering materials” and
Related Links: EPA Announces Plans to Regulate Coal Ash After Dike Failure, TVA Cleans Area Near Kingston Coal Plant Coal Ash Spill Has New Costs As John Kammeyer, P.E., Tennessee Valley Authority's vice president for coal combustion, drove up to the TVA's Kingston coal electricity plant at 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 23, 2008, and “saw all that crap across the road”—to be specific, 5.4 million cu yd of coal ash from the plant's ash pond—Kammeyer knew at once there had been an engineering failure.“I had never seen anything like that before,” he says of the wet coal ash that poured
In a harsh critique of the nation’s current policy, or lack of policy, regarding spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear waste, a presidential Blue Ribbon panel said new storage options for nuclear fuel—in addition to Yucca Mountain—must be investigated, and that a new federal agency to deal with nuclear waste should be created. The committee also urged use of interim storage sites while a long-term repository or repositories are developed. “Put simply, this nation’s failure to come to grips with the nuclear waste issue has already proved damaging and costly and it will be more damaging and more costly the longer
BridgesThe North Carolina Dept. of Transportation is proceeding with a complex replacement of the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge on the Outer Banks, despite a new lawsuit that claims the project violates the National Environmental Policy Act.PCL Civil Constructors Inc. and HDR Engineering Inc. of the Carolinas submitted the apparent winning bid of $215,777,000 for the design-build project that NCDOT estimated would cost approximately $241.6 million.Replacing the deteriorating 2.7-mile, 260-span prestressed-concrete girder structure across Oregon Inlet has long been a top priority. It is the only highway link to Hatteras Island, one of the state's most popular tourist destinations and home
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