In southeast Louisiana, crews are laboring hard to build miles of new fortifications to defend the region against another Hurricane Katrina-like disaster. But as local flood-protection officials learned last month, understanding and applying the evolving science of storm-surge and flood risk modeling is an even tougher race. Photo: Angelle Bergeron Mathijs Van Ledden, president of Haskoning Inc., a New Orleans-based division of Dutch engineering firm Royal Haskoning and flood protection adviser to the Corps of Engineers, describes storm-surge studies in Louisiana dating from 2005. Related Links: Corps Expects July Start at Seabrook “What we know about storm surge is changing
A project under way to build a $250-million renewable-fuel plant in Park Falls, Wis., will eventually draw on about 1,000 tons of forestry waste daily and convert it into sulfur-free diesel. Chart: Flambeau River Biofuels Patented process turns forestry waste into diesel fuel and other renewable products. “We will take bark, sawdust, wood chips and forest residue that wouldn’t be used for anything else and turn it into biofuel, wax, green electrical power, steam and heat that are useful,” says Bob Byrne, president of Flambeau River Biofuels. The contractor expects to begin late this year, and the plant is expected
Plans for a Southern Nevada national nuclear waste repository are all but kaput. The U.S. Energy Dept. said Feb. 1 it will withdraw its Nuclear Regulatory Commission application within 30 days. The move comes after DOE spent nearly three decades and $38 billion on waste repository tests and studies at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The agency planned to store up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste there from 80 sites in 35 states. Spent utility fuel and high-level defense waste would be placed in specially engineered containers housed inside a network of tunnels built deep within
The White House announced on Jan. 29 that the federal government will reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 28% by 2020. The announcement comes on the heels of President’s Obama’s pledge on Jan. 28 that the United States would reduce GHG emissions by 17% by 2020 as part of an international climate agreement. The Jan. 29 announcement follows up on an executive order signed by the president this fall, which required federal agencies to set sustainability goals by Jan. 4. The 28% reduction target is the aggregate of 35 federal agency self-reported targets required by the executive order. Among
A second phase of coal-ash cleanup at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston, Tenn., fossil-fuel powerplant could take at least four more years and up to $741 million to complete, says an engineering and cost analysis done for the utility and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseeing the work. Released for comment on Jan. 18, the report covers new remediation options for what remains of more than 5.4 million cu yd of waste that leaked from a collapsed-site dredge cell in late 2008. Cleanup could total $1.2 billion. Knoxville, Tenn.-based TVA says the first phase of dredging in the
Even while survivors struggle through the grim process of removing bodies and debris left by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti on Jan. 12, relief organizations are mustering materials and skills to help Haitians rebuild their lives and economy. Photo: courtesy of GMI Prefabricated school unit is demonstration for proposed PET structural panels manufacturing plant in Haiti. Related Links: Haiti Quake Assessment is Small Step Toward Recovery Wrecked Port is No Barrier to Aid The World Economic Forum’s Disaster Relief Network is one group mobilizing aid to work on hospitals and orphanages in the villages of Duverger and Dandann,
After some bumps on the road to publication, the nation’s first code-intended commercial green building standard is available from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. Use of Standard 189.1, which covers site location, energy use, recycling, water efficiency, indoor air quality, materials, resources and a building’s impact on the atmosphere, should result in a “greener” building than use of ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA’s Standard 90.1-2007, says ASHRAE. ASHRAE, which developed 189.1 with the Illuminating Engineering Society and the U.S. Green Building Council, expects the new standard to be adopted into local building codes. Details about 189.1 are available at www.ashrae.org/greenstandard.
By the time they leave on Jan. 28, the 10 U.S. structural engineers sent to Haiti to assess the condition of buildings slightly damaged in the magnitude-7 earthquake will have done about 100 surveys. However, some 100,000 buildings still will need to be inspected so that the sound structures can be reoccupied, say local sources. Photo: Daniel O’neil, PADF High-end Oasis development, under construction, is undamaged, unlike an older completed building nearby (foreground). Photo: Eduardo Fierro, BFP Engineeers Inc. Light-metal roof of reinforcing-steel plant collapsed during the quake because it was not properly connected to the building’s reinforced-concrete columns. Related
Despite projections that it will take months to rebuild the primary, deep-draft port in Port au Prince, Haiti, construction and shipping industry representatives are confident they can pour loads of building materials and heavy equipment into the earthquake-damaged country. Photos: Seaboard Marine, a subsidiary of Seaboard Corp. (www.seaboardcorp.com), Merriam, Kansas. Haitian recovery efforts may hinge on shallow-draft ships like these unloading supplies. “The port being destroyed won’t be a hindrance to getting equipment in there, not if you have an experienced heavy lift operator who knows what they are doing,” says Jerry Nagel, CEO of U.S. operations for Rickmers-Linie, Hamburg,
State and federal regulators are closely monitoring conditions at the Trans Alaska Pipeline System following the discovery of a leak and a pair of shutdowns at Booster Pump Station 1. Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, the pipeline operator, says engineers this week re-started the 800-mile pipeline for a second time since the leak was located in the basement of the facility January 8. + Image Image map: Courtesy of Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. The leak happened near pumping station 1 (seen on map as PS1). “The leak was discovered by one of the personnel during routine surveillance of the system,” says
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