An inflatable dam in downtown Tempe, Ariz., burst on July 20, emptying most of the contents of the 1-billion-gal Tempe Town Lake. No one was injured and no property was damaged in the resulting flood, which traveled down the normally dry Salt River through Phoenix. Peak flows were measured at 15,000 cu ft per second, equivalent to an average release during the area’s winter rainy season. Photo: Tony Blei Photography Eight rubber-coated fabric bladders retained 1 billion gal of water in Tempe. The two-mile lake was formed in 1999 using eight flexible, rubber-coated fabric tubes manufactured by Tokyo-based Bridgestone Industrial
Officials in northeastern Iowa are cleaning up in the aftermath of a July 24 dam failure, and early analysis indicates an earthen berm next to a section with concrete spillways was overtopped and eroded away when the rain-swollen, 9-mile-long Lake Delhi overwhelmed it. Photo: AP/WideWorld Earthen berm by spillway was overtopped and eroded. “It appears at this point that there was just a lot more water than the dam was designed for,” says Lori McDaniel, supervisor of floodplain management and dam safety programs for the Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources. Further, she says the concrete spillway next to the berm
Construction crews hit water on July 6 while digging 600 ft below Lake Mead in southern Nevada for the third “straw” water tunnel. The incident, which was not life-threatening, will delay the project’s progress by months. Vegas Tunnel Constructors LLC––a joint venture of S.A. Healy Co., Lombard, Ill., and Impreglio S.p.A., Sesto San Giovanni, Italy ––won the $447-million design-build contract in March 2008. On June 28, an underground fault breached, causing water seepage for four days and making work in the tunnel impossible. Workers were building a 100-ft-long starter shaft for the $25-million Herrenknecht 1,500-ton tunnel-boring machine for a 20-ft-dia,
Brazil is finalizing construction at its Foz do Chapec� hydroelectric plant. The last phase, a rockfill dam, was completed last April. The project used asphalt instead of clay as the main component of the sealing nucleus—a first in Brazil. The choice of this technique resulted from a number of advantages the contractors and owners of the project researched in Europe. Images Courtesy Of Volta Grande Consortium Contractor used an asphalt nucleus, instead of clay, for first time ever in Brazil. Images Courtesy Of Volta Grande Consortium Dam on Uruguay River will provide alternative route between the states of Santa Catarina
King County has sued contractor Vinci, Parsons, Frontier-Kemper (VPFK) for $74 million in damages as part of its $1.8-billion Brightwater sewer project. In the suit, amended on June 4 in King County Superior Court, the county says that VPFK fell three years behind its promised schedule and into breach of contract. VPFK’s work on the 13-mile project included construction of a 2.2-mile bored tunnel north of Seattle. Work started in September 2007, and by October 2009, the county gave VPFK formal notice it required major changes. Originally scheduled for a November 2010 completion, VPFK said it wouldn’t finish until 35
Construction on Ecuador’s 1,500-MW Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project is slated to begin by the end of the month after a months-long stalemate between the country and the Chinese groups financing 85% of the effort. Ecuador broke off discussions with Sinohydro in March over the terms of the $1.7-billion financing agreement but resumed talks after overtures from the Chinese government. The dam is on the Napo River, a tributary of the Amazon, about 75 miles east of Quito. Coca Codo is expected to supply up to 70% of Ecuador’s electricity needs, reducing its dependence on imported power.
The Chinese government is considering building a 38-GW hydroelectric project on the Brahmaputra River in the Himalayas. The dam at the Motuo bend of the river would produce 1½ times the power of China’s Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest hydroelectric-generating station. The dam is part of the Chinese government’s plan to more than double the country’s hydropower generation to 250,000 MW by 2020. A total of 28 potential dams along the Yarlung Tsangpo, as the Tibetans call the river, were identified by Tashi Tsering, a Tibetan academic based at the University of British Columbia, Canada, who studies environmental
The $800-million Port of Anchorage expansion project is more than a year behind schedule because of rules that limit crews from working in the water when any of the roughly 300 local beluga whales are within a mile of the construction zone. As originally engineered by Seattle-based PND Engineers Inc., with construction oversight by Anchorage-based Integrated Concepts and Research Corp., a high-energy impact hammer was to be used to drill steel sheets into three hard-seabed areas for the earth-filled open-cell sheet-pile configuration. However, due to the whales, crews were forced to use a vibratory-hammer method instead. The vibratory hammer apparently
Officials of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority have identified two “hot spots” close to the site of a major water supply pipe break in Boston on May 1 that may be where a critical 10-ft-dia coupling is buried after being forced loose by the rupture. The break generated a two-day boil-water edict. Crews from Barletta Engineering, Canton, Mass., now are designing a trench box to protect the pipe as they begin to excavate, an MWRA spokeswoman told ENR on May 18. The coupling is expected to offer clues to the cause of the rupture, but the agency is not speculating
Even as the U.S. Navy awarded seven U.S. and Guam-based joint-venture teams on May 10 a $4-billion indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for design-build work on the Pacific island and nearby sites over five years, it also started to compete the first major task order under the contract. Photo: U.S. Navy, by Christopher S. Borgren II Looming troop transfer will unleash huge Guam building boom. Construction will support relocation of thousands of U.S. Marines to Guam from their current base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The contract is the largest ever by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s Honolulu division. Under the
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