In summer 1858, when foul odors from the polluted River Thames forced the British Parliament to suspend its activities, legislators allocated funds to build London's first main sewers.
While the Corps of Engineers has started to open the Bonnet Carré Spillway above New Orleans, the agency has asked permission but has yet to decide whether to open the upriver Morganza Spillway to divert the floodwaters from the Mississippi's main channel. Photo by AP Worldwide/Lance Murphey BEALE STREET BLUES The landmark musical thoroughfare in Memphis, Tenn., is inundated on May 9 as the Mississippi River was reaching its highest level since the ruinous flood of 1937. Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, president of the Mississippi River Commission and commander of the Corps' Mississippi Valley Division in Vicksburg, decided to
If a storm surge threatens New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain this hurricane season, a hefty, cellular-style cofferdam will reduce the risk of it pushing into the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal and flooding areas of the city. Photo By Angelle Bergeron Alberici’s circular-cell cofferdams eliminated the need for a 25,000-cu-yd tremie seal slab Photo Courtesy Of USACE Related Links: Seabrook Floodgate Complex: Design Saves Time, Cost and Concrete The interim structure designed by Alberici Constructors, St. Louis, Mo., will allow the contractor to build the permanent Seabrook Floodgate Complex in the dry. Two rows of circular-cell cofferdams now close the canal
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which exploded a Mississippi River levee late on May 2 to relieve pressure on floodwalls at Cairo, Ill., is starting preparations for a similar diversion in Louisiana next week. The Corps pumped explosive slurry from barges into pipes in the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway in Missouri, flooding 130,000 acres of farmland to drop river levels. Water streamed through the breached levee at a rate of 550,000 cu ft per second. The river level at Cairo fell to 60.2 ft by noon on May 3 from 61.72 ft late the previous day. “We executed the
By this time next year, CBY Design Builders anticipates employing an estimated 350 workers on the $675- million, 44-month contract to construct permanent canal closures and pump stations at New Orleans' three outfall canals for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The USACE Hurricane Protection Office in New Orleans announced the award of the design-build, firm-fixed-price contract on April 13. CBY—a joint venture of CDM, Cambridge, Mass., Brasfield & Gorrie, Birmingham, Ala., and Yates Construction, Philadelphia, Miss.—beat out six other contracting teams to win. The competition included various pairings of well-known engineering companies: Weston, Archer Western, Kiewit, Arcadis, HNTB, Bechtel,
Since 2005, federal government has invested $14.6 billion to improve perimeter protections around New Orleans to reduce the risk from hurricane storm surge. Many of the new or improved elements of the 350-mile-long system include features designed to reduce the cost of operation and maintenance. Photo: Angelle Bergeron Thousands of steel batter piles bracing the IHNC surge protection barrier are sheathed in neoprene jackets to increase life and reduce maintenance. Related Links: Keeping Up Defenses Power Pump: GIWW WCC on Its Way to Completion “The Corps went to great lengths to reduce O&M costs for the local sponsor,” says Colonel
Six weeks ahead of schedule, contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers placed a 140-ton, steel vertical lift gate near the south end of an 1.8-mile-long storm surge barrier nearing completion in New Orleans. The placement marks the first closure of three openings on the surge barrier. It represents a significant milestone toward closing the barrier and having hurricane protections in place by the 2011 hurricane season. Manson Gulf LLC, Houma, La., used a 500-ton ringer crane for the March 24 installation of the gate where the Lake Borgne Inner Harbor Navigation Canal surge barrier crosses the Bayou Bienvenue
BC Hydro, the state-owned electric utility in British Columbia and Canada’s third-largest power company, is investing more than $6 billion to upgrade its transmission, generation and distribution systems, the firm announced late last month. The Burnaby, British Columbia-based utility has under way or is about to begin more than a dozen major capital projects throughout the province, including an upgrade to the 105-MW Ruskin hydroelectric plant near Vancouver. Photo: Courtesy of BC Hydro Renovation of Ruskin dam, near Vancouver, will occur in three stages. One stage will replace the structure’s piers and gates. Photo: Courtesy of BC Hydro The dam’s
The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s largest single contract to date just got a little pricier. Photo: Tony Illia For ENR Drier days Workers in 2010 in staging vault that later flooded twice. Photo: Tony Illia For ENR Tunnel-boring machine head will drill for three miles. A starter tunnel for a third raw water intake at Lake Mead flooded three times in six months last year, prompting its contractor, Vegas Tunnel Constructors LLC —a joint venture of S.A. Healy Co., Lombard, Ill., and Impreglio S.p.A., Sesto San Giovanni, Italy—to drill in a drier direction. Costs for the design-build project, awarded in
Turkey is proposing a major dam-building program, proposing at least 18 new dams along its borders. The government claims the multiyear, multimillion-dollar infrastructure initiative would ease tensions over water-sharing, prevent flooding, irrigate farmland and generate electricity. On Feb. 6, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian Premier Naji al-Otari broke ground for the Dostluk Baraji, or Friendship Dam, on the Orontes River, which flows from Lebanon into Syria and Turkey. The dam, 580 meters long and 14.5 m high, is designed to create a reservoir large enough to store 115 million cu m of water. At an estimated cost
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