If another Hurricane Katrina-like disaster hits New Orleans, the city’s water and sewer board will now have a hazard-mitigation plan to ensure that local environmental infrastructure can get state and federal emergency repair funds. “Probably a lot of other cities don’t have this because they haven’t had the disaster,” says Gordon Austin, chief of environmental affairs for the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board. “This is a formality to make sure you’re eligible for [Federal Emergency Management Agency] mitigation funds.” The board still is trying to obtain FEMA funding to mitigate an estimated $98 million in damage from Katrina, which
The growing demand for renewable energy has pushed one big Ohio power provider to build five hydroelectric projects, worth $2 billion, on existing Ohio River valley dams.
Within weeks of Ethiopia’s inauguration of the 420-megawatt Gilgel Gibe II hydro plant by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in January, a 15-meter section of its head-race tunnel collapsed. Italian engineers have begun reinstalling lights and ventilation to prepare for months of work to get water flowing again. Photo: Salini Costruttori S.p.A. One 15-meter section of the concrete-lined tunnel collapsed. The remainder of 26-km-long head-race channel is in “perfect” condition, the contractor says. According to the project’s main contractor, Rome-based Salini Costruttori S.p.A., the rest of the 26-km head-race tunnel is in “perfect” condition. The collapse site, about 10 km upstream
The largest dam removal and river restoration project in U.S. history moved a step closer to reality last month as the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Oregon, California, PacifiCorp and about 40 other groups signed agreements that will set into motion the $200-million removal of four dams on the Klamath River and the $1-billion restoration of the Klamath Basin. Photo: Pacificorp The 20-MW concrete dam Copco 1 has lost its efficiency since it was commissioned in 1918. + Image The dams, owned by PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffet’s Mid-American Energy Holdings Inc., Des Moines, Iowa, would continue to produce
As the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act nears its one-year anniversary, waste-cleanup firms anticipate another year of backlog boosts. But their peers in the water and wastewater infrastructure sector hope a U.S.-Canada agreement signed on Feb. 5 will ease “Buy American” tensions that have been dogging progress of their stimulus-funded work. Photo: Courtesy of PCL Design firms and contractors have seen few ARRA drinking-water and wastewater projects. Georgia, Minnesota and Wisconsin have put nearly all their ARRA-financed water projects out for bid, but work in other states is being held up by the ‘Buy American’ requirement. Related Links: As Federal
Regulators reminded the Southern California city of Long Beach late last month that, just as private-sector busineses must comply with safety rules, public agencies must meet the same standards or face expensive consequences. On Jan. 26, California’s State Water Resources Control Board announced it had reached a $6.2-million settlement with the city for improperly storing petroleum and waste oil in underground tanks. The settlement was the first enforcement of its kind in California against a public agency, officials say, and could result in work worth millions of dollars for specialty contractors to install monitoring systems throughout the state. The State
Despite an early-contractor-involvement award protest by Granite Construction, Watsonville, Calif., the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects to start constructing an estimated $155-million storm-surge barrier on the Lake-Pontchartrain side of New Orleans this summer. Photo: USACE/HPO Lift and sector gates would close the north end of New Orleans’ Inner Harbor Navigation Canal against storm surge, closing another chink in defenses. Related Links: New Orleans Surge Barriers Take Shape “We expect the ECI will be awarded in the next two to three weeks, and under a best-case scenario, we’ll start construction in July,” says Eric Stricklin, the Corps’ project manager. The
Madrid, Spain-based renewable energy company GA-Solar and its parent company, Spanish steel manufacturer Corporación Gestamp, announced late last month they will build a $1-billion, 300-MW photovoltaic solar project near Santa Rosa, N.M. The project is expected to take up to four years to build on a 2,500-acre site. The company says it will obtain racking equipment and possibly inverters and steel from local sources. The project joins about 20 other utility-scale solar projects in New Mexico that are in the planning stages and total 1,815 MW.
The rebuilding of Taum Sauk Upper Reservoir is a project of many superlatives. The upper bowl of the 440-MW pumped-storage system sits on top of Missouri’s highest peak, 1,590-ft Proffit Mountain. It is believed to be North America’s largest roller-compacted concrete dam. When the original earth-and-rockfill dike was over- topped and failed in December 2005, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt (R) called the damage done by the 4,365 acre-ft of water it released “the worst man-made disaster in the history of Missouri.” And the $10-million civil penalty imposed on St. Louis-based utility AmerenUE by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the
Funding will be the key to one of the largest dam removal projects in California history. State government officials and the California American Water Co. agreed on Jan. 11 to remove the 106-ft-tall San Clemente Dam on the Carmel River in Monterey County. The concrete arch dam, built in 1921, once provided drinking water to Monterey Peninsula residents, but its reservoir has since silted up 90%. In 1991, state dam inspectors also concluded the dam risked failure in a significant earthquake or flood event, which could release an estimated 2.5 million cu yds of sediment and more than 40 million
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