Despite sagging revenue at state and local levels, numerous environmental projects in the U.S. are moving ahead, driven by continued regulatory demands and a growing interest in sustainability. In the water and wastewater market, funding sources began to stabilize this spring as money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped prop up some plans and financing started to flow through the bond market again. Photo: CH2M Hill CH2M Hill has a $110-million contract for Superfund work in the western U.S., which includes the Iron Mountain site in Redding, Calif. Related Links: The Top 500 Design Firms: How Long Will
The International Code Council will hold the first public meeting focused on developing a model green-construction code, outside of Chicago in Rosemont, Ill., on July 28-30. In launching the multiyear initiative to create the International Green Construction Code, ICC says it expects a final draft of the code to be available “as a resource document” in 2010. The code, to be written under the guidance of ICC’s Sustainable Building Technology Committee, will address design and performance of new and existing commercial buildings. The American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Testing and Materials are participating in the development.
A design-build contract for a $6.8-million solar project to help power a wastewater treatment plant in Bakersfield, Calif., could see the light of day because of a proposed $3-million federal stimulus grant. Photo: Bakersfield Public Works Funding will come from federal stimulus grant and utility, municipal sources. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds will cover 44% of the cost of a 1-MW single axis photovoltaic tracking system on a 5-acre site adjacent to Wastewater Treatment Plant No. 3, with room to expand. “The stimulus funds were a significant factor in making the numbers pencil out,” said Art Chianello,
A combination of factors, including a previously unknown layer of "slime," led to the Dec. 22, 2008, layer of coal ash sludge that overflowed its aging storage facility at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant near Knoxville and contaminated hundreds of acres, according to a 1,400-page, three-foot-thick "root cause" analysis released June 25. Photo: TVA Cleanup of stricken site is well under way The analysis, conducted by Los Angeles-based AECOM Technology Corp., found that the angled geometry of the site, along with increased loads due to higher fill and the wet-placed loose ash, along with the weak slime foundation, all
Twenty years after Congress mandated improved water flow in the Everglades, a federal judge has removed a major obstacle to accomplishing that goal: Judge Ursula Ungaro of the Florida Southern District Court in Miami lifted her injunction on elevating one mile of U.S. Rte. 41, the Tamiami Trail. Construction of the highway in the early 1920s blocked the sheetflow of water across the ecosystem, precipitating a long-term decline of the Everglades. The Interior Dept. last year made the project a top priority. But in November, the Miccosukee Tribe won the injunction, claiming that Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to perform
Members of the U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee are challenging the limits of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' mission for building natural hazard defenses. During a June 16 hearing on hurricane and flood protection work in Southeast Louisiana the narrow issue was the Corps' recommendation for an $800 million project to build permanent pumps and storm surge barriers at mouths of three New Orleans outfall canals. The committee chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the Louisiana delegation and witnesses backed a $3.5-billion "Option 2," instead, which would improve city storm drainage as well as perimeter defenses. Although the
After a delay lasting two years, construction began last month on a $2-billion chemical plant in Zhangzhou, in China’s Fujian Province. The plant site is on the Gulei peninsula, 50 miles from Zhangzhou, a city with 4 million people. Officials in neighboring Xiamen, the original site, cancelled the project in 2007 following protests over potential pollution and health problems. Central-government agencies reassessed the project, and in January the Ministry of Environmental Protection approved an environmental impact review. The plant owner is Tenglong Aromatic PX Co. Ltd., whose parent company is the Xianglu Group, from Taiwan. The plant will produce paraxylene
Engineers are getting better at picking up the pieces after hurricanes and reducing the next-flood risk in devastated areas. But places vulnerable to catastrophic events generally must wait until they have been wrecked before significant risk-reduction measures are planned, funded and applied. Grand Isle berm rebuilt around geotube core. As the 2009 hurricane season opens, $14.3 billion worth of levee repairs and new defense construction is roaring ahead in the area smashed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Construction began in May on a massive, roughly $1.8-billion surge barrier to protect the southeastern flank of New Orleans, where the Corps of
The green revolution may be a much-ballyhooed fixture with architectural, engineering and construction cognoscenti, but what happens when the revolution actually arrives on the doorstep of the traditional blue collar, Irish Catholic, family-oriented stronghold of South Boston? Wicked Delicate Films' production of The Greening of Southie successfully explores that theme with a hip blend of time-lapse photography, great music and on-point dialogue as a young management team leads skeptical tradesmen through the experience of assembling an 11-story, 144 unit condominium project called the Macallen Building. Photo: Wicked Delicate Films Related Links: Preview of The Greening of Southie Southie, of course,
The Senate has confirmed President Barack Obama’s pick to head up the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation. The Senate approved Regina McCarthy for the post on June 2 by a voice vote. The former Connecticut Dept. of Environmental Protection chief will be responsible for overseeing the development of regulations for powerplant emissions of sulfur, mercury and nitrogen oxide. McCarthy’s nomination was held up for weeks by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who placed a procedural “hold” on her nomination because of her support for the EPA’s recent finding that greenhouse gases could pose a threat to public health
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