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
EnvironmentalIt took three days, but workers at New York City's North River Wastewater Treatment Plant finally succeeded in stopping raw sewage from flowing into the Hudson River after a fire shuttered the plant on July 20. On average, the plant, located in Harlem west of the West Side Highway, treats 20 million gallons per day of wastewater. The plant has been in operation since 1986.The four-alarm blaze began in the engine room at about 11:45 a.m., shutting down pumps and causing millions of gallons of sewage to spill into the river. Dept. of Environmental Protection workers and contractors stopped the
EnvironmentThe meticulous cleanup of Montana's Yellowstone River continues following a July 1 ExxonMobil oil pipeline rupture that spewed 1,000 barrels of crude oil into the flooding river at the pipe's Silvertip crossing near Laurel, Mont.Bob Perciasepe, Environmental Protection Agency deputy administrator, told a U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee on July 21 that 755 personnel on site included 610 people “currently in the field engaged in cleanup and sampling.”Exxon spokeswoman Rachel Moore says crews have deployed 57,000 ft of boom and about 277,000 absorbent pads to help sop up the oil. More than 60 private contractors—ranging from security to
As the investigation and cleanup of the ExxonMobil oil spill in the Yellowstone River continues in Montana, plans for a much longer oil line are coming under scrutiny. The State Dept. says it will consider the recent leak from the ExxonMobil pipeline as part of its ongoing review of the international TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, parts of which originate in Hardisty, Alberta, and cross through the same river in Montana on its way to oil terminals located in Texas. “Since we're in the decision process, of course we're looking at what's happened in the ExxonMobil case, and we're interested in
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized new clean air rules on Thursday that have already forced utilities to close dozens of coal plants in lieu of installing billions of dollars of after-market pollution-control equipment.The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule reduces the amount of allowable levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in 27 states in the East, the Midwest and Texas. The rule targets SO2 and NOX because they can cross state lines, react with the atmosphere and can contribute to harmful levels of smog and soot.“These clean air standards for power plant pollution will provide some of the greatest human
By treating ever-more wastewater rather than discharging it into its harbor, Hong Kong has been creating a growing mountain of sludge, which is set to overwhelm available disposal sites. With more sewage treatment capacity now under development, the Chinese Special Administrative Region is investing in one of the world’s largest fluidised-bed sludge incinerators. Image courtesy Claude Vasconi/Veolia The Tuen Mun is designed to handle 2,000 tonnes of sludge per day. Because of its isolated coastal location, the project includes a seawater desalination facility that will provide water for the site. Image courtesy Arup Completed in 1997, the sewage treatment plant
U Canyon—a huge, windowless concrete monolith that housed secret Cold War-era plutonium and uranium processing work at the U.S. Energy Dept.'s Hanford site, the former nuclear-weapons production facility in eastern Washington—has sat empty and inert for more than four decades. Now, however, the cavernous structure will become a beehive of activity as a technology test site, featuring a first-time DOE process in which 20,000 cu yd of specially formulated, cement-like grout is pumped beneath the edifice to stabilize its radioactivity before final demolition. U.S. Dept. of Energy Crews are filling underground cells with grout at the former nuclear weapons plant
Binghamton and Johnson City, N.Y., officials are waiting for a state report that could shut down their jointly owned and operated wastewater treatment plant for safety issues after a treatment cell wall collapsed last month, dumping 580,000 gallons of partially treated wastewater into the Susquehanna River.Only seven non-union employees are entering the area after 41 union workers complained about the safety of the plant's biological aerated filtration (BAF) treatment system section and a leaking roof in the facility's control room. The BAF system was installed as part of an upgrade in 2004-2006.The New York State Dept. of Labor conducted an
Eight pumps with a capacity totaling 13,920 cu ft per second were put through their paces on June 3, demonstrating that the $1-billion Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex near Harvey, La., is ready for operation this hurricane season.
The staff of Tampa Bay Water, Clearwater, Fla., is recommending awarding a $162.4-million contract to Kiewit Infrastructure Group, Omaha, Neb., to repair and expand the utility’s six-year-old, 15.5-billion-gallon, cracking reservoir.
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