As spring approaches, officials from Minnesota to New Orleans are eyeing Mississippi River levees—already lapped by higher-than-normal water levels—and bracing for likely floods. Photo: USACE Sandbag rings (above) keep levees from eroding from within. Control structures like the Bonnet Carré Spillway (below) can relieve pressure. Photo: Angelle Bergeron Related Links: Flood Strategy Taps Proven Tools, But Will Rivers Play By The Rules? “There is an above-normal probability of major flooding on the Mississippi River this year, all the way up to Minnesota, but especially north of St. Louis,” says Bill Frederick, National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist and liaison with the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson fleshed out details of the administration’s five-year, $2.2-billion Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action plan at a Feb. 21 news conference at the National Governors’ Association’s winter meeting in Washington. The plan, which covers fiscal years 2010-2014, was developed by 16 federal agencies. It calls for cleaning up some of the most heavily polluted hot spots, including remediation of 9.4 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment; restoring wetlands and other habitats; establishing total maximum daily loads for phosphorus; and taking steps to keep invasive species such as Asian carp out of the lakes. President
The United Nations now estimates that 3 million Haitians—a third of the population—were “badly affected” by the magnitude-7 earthquake that ravaged the island nation on Jan. 12. Providing shelter, sanitation and preventing cholera in Port-au-Prince are critical challenges, but so are food shortages in rural areas. An estimated 500,000 former residents of the badly damaged capital have migrated to the countryside. Photo: Odebrecht Construction At Work Odebrecht retrained 30 local airport service employees in basic construction skills and hired them to work on refurbishing airport-terminal passenger and cargo facilities in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for American Airlines, which assisted with procurement and
Engineers are finalizing design for a 17-mile-long pipeline that will deliver methane gas from a landfill in Muskego, Wis., to fuel a wastewater treatment plant in Milwaukee. The pipeline is the first step in an $80-million investment that will save the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) at least $148 million over the next 20 years by enabling its Jones Island plant to generate its own heat and electricity by burning landfill-generated methane instead of natural gas. In addition to saving money, the plant will also cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 500,000 tons a year. MMSD tentatively plans to seek bids from
Engineers are finalizing design for a 17-mile-long pipeline that will deliver methane gas from a landfill in Muskego, Wis., to fuel a wastewater treatment plant in Milwaukee. The pipeline is the first step in an $80-million investment that will save the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) at least $148 million over the next 20 years by enabling its Jones Island plant to generate its own heat and electricity by burning landfill-generated methane instead of natural gas. In addition to saving money, the plant will also cut greenhouse gas emissions by 500,000 tons a year. MMSD tentatively plans to seek bids
California’s Air Resources Board downshifted this month by offering contractors “relief.” The regulatory board says it will delay enforcement of its emissions regulations—which were set to go into effect on March 1—for existing off-road diesel machinery until it receives a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Construction lobbyists say the move is counterproductive to their recommendation to fully delay the rules for two more years. “CARB’s offer to not enforce the off-road regulation—a rule that it cannot fully enforce without a waiver from the federal EPA—as ‘relief’ is disingenuous at best,” says Mike Lewis, senior vice president of the
The family of Lee Strickland, a PBSJ Corp. engineering manager who was in Haiti during the Jan. 12 earthquake, has turned to the U.S. military for assistance in the recovery effort, according to a company spokeswoman. Strickland, who is transportation planning group manager for the Tampa-based firm’s Orlando business unit, had been in the Haitian capital staying at the Hotel Montana when the magnitude-7.0 quake struck. According to the company, he was set to provide technical advice on proposed development projects in Haiti at a workshop whose participants were to include top U.S. and Haitian government officials. “The decision for
The U.S. Dept. of Energy is withdrawing its Nuclear Regulatory Commission application for a waste-storage facility in southern Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The move comes after DOE spent decades and $38 billion researching and building at the site. Photo: DOE wasted energy The Energy Dept. on Feb. 1 said it would pull Yucca Mountain’s storage application by month’s end. Deep inside the mountain, DOE would have stored up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste from 80 sites in 35 states. Spent fuel and defense waste was to go in special containers within a network of tunnels. Government estimates put the construction
The U.S. government’s long-term role in Haiti’s recovery from the devastation of the magnitude-7 earthquake on Jan. 12 is still not clearly defined, and it may not be for weeks and months to come. But in the short term, as logistics improve and food and water distribution stabilizes, the creation of temporary housing and medical facilities is at the forefront of the second phase of operations. Other governments and industry volunteers also are playing a role. Photo: U.S. Navy Photo By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Chris Lussier. U.S. Marines with the 8th Engineer Support Battalion unload supplies from a
The government of Miyi County in Sichuan Province has begun construction on an ecologically sensitive new town, which will eventually house 100,000 people. The 825-acre site, located south of the city of Pazhihua along the Anning River, will include higher-density housing and commercial zones as well as new wetlands and recreational and agricultural districts. SWA Group, a landscape architecture, planning and urban design firm based in Los Angeles, won the master-plan competition in 2008. A promenade made up of parks and public spaces, designed by SWA, will provide river access. SWA hired Los Angeles-based architectural firm Studio SHIFT to design