Israel’s IDE Technologies is set to win a contract worth more than $100 million to build four additional thermal desalination units at a Tianjin, China, powerplant that will become the country’s largest desal complex when completed. The Kadima-based firm beat out France’s SIDEM, India’s VA Tech Wabag Ltd. and several Chinese companies for the award from Tianjin SDIC, the Chinese powerplant owner. IDE will supply the multi-effect distillation desal units to double production of desalinated water to a total capacity of 200,000 cu meters a day. Photo Courtesy Ide Technologies Facility in Tianjin, China, will become the country’s largest desalination
In Venice, all eyes are on dramatic work at three lagoon inlets to hold back flood tides that repeatedly assault the historic Italian city. But along the mainland shore, engineers from the same construction consortium quietly are stemming more insidious flows of industrial pollution from Porto Marghera into the 550-sq-kilometer lagoon. Photo: Peter Reina Massive caissons will support 78 steel gates that weigh 300 tonnes each. Photo: Peter Reina Project Manager Roland Bastian with interlocking, Z-section sheet piles recycled from scrap metal. Related Links: Stemming Venice Lagoon Pollution: Barriers sheet piled at Porto Marghera About two-thirds of a 57-km-long “fence”
A federal science agency says the Gulf of Mexico coast from the Mississippi River to the western Florida panhandle remain the most vulnerable to oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill. Texas’ coast has little chance of being struck but currents in the Gulf raise the probability to six to eight out of ten that the Florida Keys, Miami and Ft. Lauderdale will be hit. Exactly where surface oil will spread in upcoming months can’t be known for sure, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. To make its estimates, NOAA scientists factor in historical wind and ocean current
Maintenance and compliance remain the primary drivers for environmental infrastructure projects in the U.S. However, although funding remains a challenge for many communities, sentiments about the sector’s prospects are, on the whole, upbeat. Photo: Arcadis More private firms are outsourcing site remediation oversight. Related Links: View More on Top 500 Sourcebook 2010 View Complete Top 500 Sourcebook 2010 with Data and Analysis “It looks stable and strengthening, even though there aren’t many opportunities for new facilities right now,” observes Dan Batrack, CEO of Pasadena, Calif.-based Tetra Tech, whose firm is designing a $564,000 disinfection facility at the Birmingham Wastewater Treatment
As scientists begin to assess the impact of the first tropical storm of the 2010 hurricane season on a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the fight to seal the leaking well and protect the coastline continues. Image Photo: Courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory Tropical storms are a wild-card factor in predicting the behavior of the oil still gushing from the site of a deeptwater-well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, shown here in a satellite view taken on June 26. Scientists want to improve their predictions of oil-spill behavior when slicks are assailed by major storms like
Three Republican U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would temporarily allow foreign vessels to assist with the oil cleanup effort in the Gulf of Mexico. Related Links: Investigations Expand List Of BP’s Drill-Program Failures The senators are Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), George LeMieux (R-Fla.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). The June 18th move comes in response to questions raised in Congress about whether the Jones Act, a maritime law dating back to the 1920s that permits only American ships and vessels to transport goods to and from U.S. ports, is impeding progress on the oil spill cleanup. Some lawmakers have called
Congress, engineers and oil industry executives have identified a list of flawed decisions made by BP and others—made under pressure to speed up work and reduce cost—that may be behind the April 20 fatal explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Photo Courtesy of BP Above, gas and oil is burned off at the site of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. BP says it is capturing more than 23,000 barrels of oil a day and burning about half of it. The explosion killed 11 workers and led to the eruption of oil
U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman on June 22 ordered an injunction against the federal government’s six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, issued one month after the April 20 explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform. The New Orleans-based judge agreed with the plaintiffs, oil services firms and others that the government was “arbitrary and capricious” in implementing the May 28 ban on new wells in more than 500 ft of water. Feldman said the government did not prove that the accident indicates a threat from the 33 rigs operating in the Gulf. The federal
Despite Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s (I) authorization this month of as much as $200 million for a long-term effort to provide upgraded sewer systems for the Florida Keys, the prospects are poor for funding in total the estimated $937-million project. The governor’s action—which also extended the project deadline to 2015 from July 2010—does not provide a timeline for delivery of the Everglades Restoration bonds; it only authorizes the Florida Legislature to initiate the $200 million in bonding sometime in the future. Liz Wood, Monroe County’s senior administrator for sewer projects, says the nine municipalities and utilities that will build the
The Tennessee Dept. of Environment and Conservation on June 15 assessed a $11.5-million fine against the Tennessee Valley Authority in connection with the December 2008 spill that released 5.4 million cu yds of coal ash from TVA’s Kingston, Tenn., coal-fired plant onto surrounding land and into the Emory River. The fine is the first against the federal power-marketing agency since the accident, but TVA will receive a $3-million credit for remediation already performed. Cleanup could cost $1.2 billion. Under the state fine, TVA will perform supplemental environmental projects totaling $2 million. The remainder will be earmarked for the state’s solid-waste
RSS
