Cleanup of the worst spill of its kind the history of the United States continues this week in east Tennessee, where an earthen retention wall at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston coal plant failed on Dec. 22 and covered 300 acres with 5.4 million cubic yards and water—or more than one billion gallons—of a sludge-like byproduct of coal combustion called fly ash. Photo: AP/Wide world House knocked off it foundation near site of Tennessee spill. Photo: AP/Wideworld Impoundment pond retention wall failure on Dec. 22 covered 300 acres with 5.4 million cu yd of coal-combustion waste from TVA’s Kingston powerplant.
Parsons Corp., Pasadena, Calif. protested Dec. 23 the U.S. Energy Dept.'s award Dec. 8 of a $3.3-billion contract to a URS Washington Division-led team for liquid waste cleanup at its Savannah River Site former nuclear weapons manufacturing complex in Aiken, S.C. The protest was filed to the U.S. Government Accountability Office by the firm's limited liability company, Savannah River Tank Closure. That unit, a venture that also included Fluor Corp. and Northrop Grumman, was the only other contract bidder. GAO will have 100 days to decide on the protest of the contract, a six-year award at minimum that involves cleaning
President-Elect Barack Obama has tapped Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) for the top post at the Interior Dept. The nomination, announced Dec. 17, has been well received by both industry and environmental groups, who describe the candidate as a centrist consensus builder. “He’s a good pick,” says Steve Hall, vice president of government affairs for the American Council of Engineering Companies. “He’s built a good reputation in the Senate as a consensus builder who listens to both sides…We can work with him.” he says. Ralph Grossi, the immediate past president of the American Farmland Trust, says Salazar did “yeoman’s work” in
The California Air Resources Board on Dec. 11 voted to adopt the nation’s first comprehensive state global warming plan. The goal: reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The “scoping plan” implements the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act. The measure is intended as a blueprint for achieving target emission reductions. The plan takes a multi-pronged approach to cutting state greenhouse gases. There are provisions to create more energy efficiency in buildings, more reliance on renewable energy sources, statewide standards for capturing methane at landfills and more efficiency in the state’s water system. According to Patrick Sullivan, senior vice president of
President-Elect Barack Obama (D) has selected a veteran team of regulators and administrators to fill the nation’s top energy and environmental posts, a team that sources say will be focused on climate change and developing renewable energy sources. He formally announced his picks for energy secretary, Environmental Protection Agency administrator, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and a new advisory position to coordinate policies on climate change and energy across all federal agencies Dec. 15. Environmental groups say they like what they see in the nominees. Obama has asked former EPA Administrator Carol Browner to serve as
The U.S. Energy Dept has awarded its last major revamped management contract this year at a U.S. nuclear cleanup megasite, selecting a URS Washington-division-led team for a $3.3-billion, six-year award to manage liquid wastes at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. It bested a competing bid from a team led by Parsons Corp. and including Fluor Corp., a Parsons spokeswoman confirms. The URS venture also includes Babcock & Wilcox, Bechtel National Inc., CH2M Hill Constructors Inc. and AREVA Federal Services LLC, the U.S. unit of the French nuclear technology firm. The award returns URS to a significant management role
It is going to take a risk-based strategy on the federal, state and local levels to provide hurricane and flood protection in New Orleans and mitigate risk associated with disasters nationwide. “We are looking at a multihazard approach, multiple lines of defense and nonstructural methods, such as emergency preparedness for mitigating risk,” said Earthea Nance, New Orleans' first director of disaster mitigation planning, at last month’s annual meeting of the American Water Resources Association, in New Orleans. “The traditional disaster-protection paradigm is predicated on a strong federal role and a diminished local role. In New Orleans that resulted in an
Chesapeake Bay advocates are disappointed that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state officials failed to set a firm deadline for reducing nutrient pollution in the 64,000-sq-mile Chesapeake Bay watershed at last month’s annual meeting of federal and state leaders overseeing the cleanup effort. Bay advocates are threatening legal action to force officials to commit to cleaning up the bay. “They didn’t commit to anything that is going to reduce pollution,” says Roy Hoagland, vice president for environ-mental protection and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He says efforts to clean up the bay have been unsuccessful, even though billions of
Construction is beginning on the largest design-build civil works project in the history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a $695-million barrier designed to protect New Orleans from storm surges similar to that generated by Hurricane Katrina, which inundated the low-lying city in 2005. Slide Show Photo: Angelle Bergeron / ENR Surge barrier to protect New Orleans is the largest design-build job in Corps history. Related Links: Behind the Scenes in a Casting Yard Photo: Angelle Bergeron / ENR Mike Spruill Sr. says all his casting jobs post-Katrina are simply bigger. Barrier piles are 140 ft long. The Inner
Washington state sued the U.S. Energy Dept. Nov. 26 in federal district court in Spokane for failing to meet key milestones for cleaning up 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste at its 586-square-mile Hanford former nuclear weapons site near the Columbia River. Photo: U.S. Energy Dept. Lengthy cleanup of aging waste tanks is lawsuit focus The lawsuit addresses DOE's pace in emptying 177 massive underground waste tanks, many of which date to the 1940s when atomic bombmaking began at Hanford, and are leaking into groundwater. The state is also demanding earlier completion of the site's $12.3-billion Waste Treatment Plant,