Part of the reason that professor André Sorensen, an urban geographer at the University of Toronto, chose Japanese city planning in the early 1990s as his academic niche is that the topic had barely been explored at the time, at least in English. “Japan was the second-largest economy in the world, and there was almost nothing written about it,” says Sorensen, whose Ph.D. focused on Tokyo’s problematic sprawl and whose books have included 2004’s “The Making of Urban Japan.” Photo: Courtesy Of André Sorensen André Sorensen is the author of “The Making of Urban Japan.” From 1994 to 2002, Sorensen
Beyond the Nuclear Nightmare: Quake Takes a Daunting Toll With estimates of at least 110,000 buildings damaged or destroyed and 20,000 fatalities in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, rebuilding Japan will be a long and expensive undertaking, dwarfing the financial impact of the 1995 Kobe quake disaster. The World Bank estimates dam- age at up to $235 billion, 4% of Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP), compared with $100 billion for Kobe, or 2% of GDP. Private insurers could pay up to $33 billion to cover the destruction, compared with $783 million for Kobe, according to the bank. Restoration will
Florida politicians at the state and national level are trying to prohibit, defund or at least slow down implementation of a new water-quality standard for phosphorous and nitrogen. The new rule, recently issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, addresses the problem of algae blooms and establishes numeric criteria for nutrient pollution, mostly related to nitrogen and phosphorous, in the state’s lakes and flowing waters. Florida’s current standards are narrative-based, or verbal descriptions of clean- water conditions. EPA developed the rule as part of a 2008 lawsuit settlement with the Florida Wildlife Federation and finalized it in November 2010, according
New Orleans has a better defense should another big storm hit the city. But it’s never going to be completely safe. JoEllen Darcy (left), assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, speaking in New Orleans. At right are Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, chief of Engineers for the Corps of Engineers and Colonel Edward Fleming, commander of the Corps’ New Orleans districts. “You can’t eliminate risk no matter where you are,” said Jo Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, at a March 22 press conference in New Orleans. “What we are doing here is buying down
The U.S. government on March 17 gave final regulatory approval for the first floating production storage and offloading facility in the Gulf of Mexico. The FPSO will be used instead of permanent production platforms. Operators in the gulf have not needed the technology previously because of the vast infrastructure that already exists in the Gulf of Mexico. The FPSO, the BW Pioneer, will have the capacity to produce up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day and 16 million cu ft of gas per day. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement says the facility will soon be
With estimates of at least 110,000 buildings damaged or destroyed and 20,000 fatalities in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, rebuilding Japan will be a long and expensive undertaking, dwarfing the financial impact of the 1995 Kobe quake disaster. The World Bank estimates dam- age at up to $235 billion, 4% of Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP), compared with $100 billion for Kobe, or 2% of GDP. Private insurers could pay up to $33 billion to cover the destruction, compared with $783 million for Kobe, according to the bank. Photo: Kit Miyamoto/Miyamoto International U.S. engineer Miyamoto surveys coastal damage. Related
Florida politicians at the state and national level are trying to prohibit, defund or at least slow down implementation of a new water-quality standard for phosphorous and nitrogen. The new rule, recently issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, addresses the problem of algae blooms and establishes numeric criteria for nutrient pollution, mostly related to nitrogen and phosphorous, in the state’s lakes and flowing waters. Florida’s current standards are narrative-based, or verbal descriptions of clean- water conditions. EPA developed the rule as part of a 2008 lawsuit settlement with the Florida Wildlife Federation and finalized it in November 2010, according
For the U.S., the clear danger from a tsunami lies just offshore in the Pacific seabed where the Cascadia Subduction Zone shows up as a fault stretching about 800 miles, from Vancouver Island to Punta Gorda, Calif. Photo: AP Photo/The Times-Standard, Josh Jackson Half-sunken boats, docks and debris lie tangled Saturday, March 12, 2011, in Crescent City, Calif., after Friday's tsunami in Northern California. Related Links: Nuclear Nightmare Damage Assessments Climb At U.S. Ports and Harbors Seismologists say it has the potential to do almost exactly what happened on March 11 off Japan’s northeastern coast: generate a giant earthquake and
The March 11 tsunami battered U.S. coasts and ports from Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest to southern California. Related Links: Nuclear Nightmare Pacific Northwest Faces Tsunami Risk The waves were much less powerful after crossing the Pacific. The epicenter of the 8.9 magnitude quake was the northeast coast of Japan. The governor’s office in Hawaii expects damage to run to about $10 million. Estimates are heading toward $50 million in California and one county in Oregon one of three damaged ports is reporting $25 million worth of destruction there alone. Witnesses describe a day of violent wave action inside normally
Pittsburgh-based Consol Energy, the largest U.S. producer of coal from underground mines, will build an advanced wastewater treatment plant to treat wastewater from multiple mines in Appalachia as part of a settlement with the U.S. Dept. of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency and the state of West Virginia. The federal complaint, filed concurrently with the settlement agreement, alleges that, in the past four years, Consol mines violated pollution discharge limits in their Clean Water Act permits hundreds of times. The settlement, announced on March 14, calls for Consol to pay a $5.5-million civil penalty for Clean Water Act violations at
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