As potential donors gather at the United Nations to assemble a fund to help rebuild earthquake-battered Haiti, the White House is asking Congress for additional spending to contribute to the reconstruction effort. Haiti is hoping to raise $3.9 billion at the March 31 donors’ meeting to cover the initial 18-month phase of what is certain to be a lengthy reconstruction. The estimated total rebuilding cost is $11.5 billion, the U.N. says. More than 220,000 were killed in the Jan. 12, magnitude-7 quake, and an estimated 2 million people are living in temporary shelter in Port-au-Prince or have moved away from
TransCanada Corp., based in Calgary, Alberta, received permission on March 11 from Canada’s Energy Board to build the 327-mile Canadian portion of the Keystone XL expansion pipeline, which will be the first pipeline to take Canadian crude oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The 36-inch pipeline will be 1,980 miles long, beginning in Hardisty, Alberta, and going through Saskatchewan, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and finally into Texas. The $1.66-billion pipeline will carry the equivalent of 1.1 million barrels per day. Applications for U.S. regulatory approvals are proceeding, and decisions are expected late this year. TransCanada says construction is
Despite the gloomy construction employment climate, one New Orleans contractor has established a new safety and craft training facility and will hire several hundred people to bring its workforce to 1,000 by summer. Photo: Angelle bergeron Pump house Forming has begun on the walls of the structure that will house the largest capacity pump station in the country. Related Links: Video: Blowin’ and Goin’: GIWW West Closure Complex Gulf IntraCoastal Constructors, a joint venture of Kiewit Corp, Omaha, Neb., and Traylor Bros. Inc., Evansville, Ind., is gearing up to deliver the $854.8-million Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex, designed by
Milwaukee is spending $100 million on a metropolitan flood-control project, hoping to avoid future flood damages that have cost that much since 1997. The centerpiece of the plan is a 17-ft-diameter, half-mile-long tunnel that will drain up to 3,405 cu ft per second of water from a flood-prone creek into a 315-million-gallon detention basin. Slide Show Photo: Mike Larson Tunnel diameter is more than 17 ft, designed to quickly channel stormwater to detention basin. When heavy rain causes nearby Underwood Creek to overflow, the new tunnel will drain the excess water to a 65-acre engineered detention basin that will slowly
On March 3, the U.S. Energy Dept. formally withdrew its application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make southern Nevada the site of national nuclear-waste repository. The move comes after 23 years and $38 billion in studies at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where it had planned to store up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste from 80 sites in 35 states. The construction price tag was estimated at about $100 billion. It leaves the waste problem unresolved and the federal government exposed to utility lawsuits. Since 1983, ratepayers have paid over $33 billion into the Nuclear
Enbridge Inc. is itching to get going on its proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline stretching from outside Edmonton, Alberta, to Kitimat, B.C. Initially introduced in 2005, the 727-mile pipeline project is headed to Canada's National Energy Board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency for joint review "very soon," according to Jennifer Varey, spokesperson. If approved, construction could start in 2012. Calgary, Alberta,-based Enbridge plans to transport 525,000 barrels per day of petroleum in the 36-inch west-moving pipeline and 193,000 barrels per day of condensate—a product used to thin petroleum products for pipeline transport—in the 20-inch east-moving line. The project, estimated at
In a strongly worded response that was not a surprise to the U.S. military, a San Francisco-based official of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has raised concerns about the potentially major environmental and infrastructure damage from the planned relocation of thousands of Marines and others to the tiny Pacific island of Guam. EPA is concerned the movement of thousand of U.S. Marines, construction workers and others to Guam will harm its sensitive ecology and overstress infrastructure. In a Feb. 17 letter to Roger Natsuhara, acting assistant U.S. Navy secretary for installations and environment, EPA regional administrator Jared Blumenfeld says the
De-authorizing navigation on the Missouri River would do wonders to ensure a robust water supply for irrigation and recreation in the Midwest—although at a cost to certain interest groups, many of them downstream. Photo: Harry Weddington, Omaha District, USACE Some call for de-authorizing navigation to relieve restrictions on water for crops. Photo: Harry Weddington, Omaha District, USACE Spillway is at Gavins Point Dam, near Yankton, S.D. Every option is on the table as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launches a study to challenge whether the “eight purposes” enshrined in a 66-year-old federal act that governs water management policy on
A joint U.S.-European group has presented the low bid to analyze the options for a vehicular crossing at the Atlantic entrance of the Panama Canal, officials said on Monday. Photo: C.J. Schexnayder The Third Lane Expansion project will be built roughly at the site of a previous excavation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, visible to the left of the Gatun Locks. San Francisco-based URS Corp. and the Danish firm COWI A/S submitted a bid of $895,000—the lowest of five tendered—to examine the possibilities of a permanent crossing at the historic waterway’s Atlantic entrance that will allow uninterrupted traffic
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared on March 2 that the Gowanus Canal will be added to the list of federal Superfund cleanup sites. The heavily polluted canal runs through an old industrial sector in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and empties into New York harbor. EPA’s decision will set in motion a $500-million, decade-long effort to clean up the former industrial canal, which EPA says is contaminated with PCBs, coal-tar waste, heavy metals and volatile organics. Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) had opposed the EPA designation, fearing it would endanger real estate developement plans for the area. EPA