A federal judge in New Orleans ruled on March 20 that a civil lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers brought by homeowners who suffered flood damage in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 can proceed. The suit claims the Corps is liable for levee failures along the Mississippi River to Gulf Outlet, a navigation channel. The Corps has immunity from claims arising from flood-control failures but does not have the same protection with respect to navigation infrastructure. Judge Stanwood J. Duval Jr. said “substantial questions” have been raised. Damages could reach $100 billion.
The Environmental Protection Agency on March 12 announced that it will funnel $297 million in stimulus aid to three northwestern states, Alaska and tribal governments for clean water projects. The funds are the first installment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding to come from the EPA. The individual amounts directed to Alaska, Oregon, Washington and tribal governments will be delivered via existing programs: the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, and the Tribal clean Water & Drinking Water Set-Aside programs. Alaska will receive $43 million, Idaho will receive $39 million, Oregon will receive
The House of Representatives on March 5 approved legislation authorizing $19.4 billion to fund wastewater infrastructure over the next five years. The House voted 317 to 101 to approve the measure, which would authorize $13.8 billion over five years for the Clean Water state revolving funds (SRF), the principal source of federal funding for wastewater infrastructure. The bill also would provide more than $2.5 billion over five years in grants to address combined sewer overflows and sanitary sewer overflows and $750 million over five years for remediation of contaminated sediments in the Great Lakes region. Introduced just March 3 by
At conferences and on Websites, at research centers and out on windswept coasts around the world, increasing numbers of engineers, scientists, planners and policymakers are gathering to share ideas and lessons learned about a growing threat to one of the linchpins of civilization: the delta regions of the world. Those fragile landforms, built patiently over millennia by the sediment deposited at the mouths of the world’s mightiest rivers, are home to great ports and commercial centers of the global economy. They are, by definition, low and coastal; they also are on the front line to suffer hard consequences from climate
For centuries the Dutch took land from the sea by trapping sediment on tidal flats, diking polders and continuously pumping with windmills to dry the land. Now, faced with a need to bolster a 32-km, sea-facing dike built in the 1930s that turned the IJselmeer into Lake IJsel, an Amersfoort, Nl-based consulting firm, DVH, is proposing a return to old ways: Instead of breaking out heavy machinery and adding width and height to the dike to guard against sea-level rise, it proposes weaving traditional snags of willow reeds on tidal flats to trap sediment on the sea side of the
No city in the world takes climate change and sea-level rise more seriously than Rotterdam. The great port is entwined by the channels of the Maas, Schie and Rotte rivers, which are part of the of the vast delta fed by the Rhine draining Germany, and the Meuse, draining out of France. And it stares directly out at the North Sea from the part of the country known as the Southern Lowlands. As larger cargo vessels abandon a wealth of old shipyards and warehouses in the town to move to bigger docks downstream, redevelopment plans for the huge old port
Elastogran GmbH, a Lemförde, Germany-based subsidiary of BASF Group, has begun commercial sales in Europe of Elastocoast, a system for reinforcing broken rock revetments with a polyurethane binder. Pilot installations to protect several quickly disappearing North Sea German Islands, including Hallig Gröde (shown here) armored in two projects in 2006 and 2007, have performed well. The binder is tumbled in a concrete mixer on-site and spread over a substrate. A Wyandotte, Mich., U.S. branch is working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop design guidelines for U.S. use. Video Photo: Tom Sawyer / ENR Photo: Elastogran Related Links:
Reducing flood risk on the Mississippi River delta is big business. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working with a $14.3-billion appropriation to bring the Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System to 100-year levels of protection by June 1, 2011. Photo: Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure Group Pile driving for $695 million IHNC barrier. Cost expected to climb. Related Links: Engineers Focus On Big Delta Threats Building With Nature by Weaving Defenses California Wants a Sea-Level-Rise Plan, But Money Is an Issue Connecting the Rocks Defining Protection To Know the Risk Climate-Proofing Rotterdam This will be
Although Marie Laveau no longer practices voodoo in New Orleans, another “dark art” —soils testing—is practiced there, under unprecedented scrutiny and at a higher level of intensity than ever before. “The work here is moving state of practice into state of the art,” says Dr. Rai Mehdiratta, program director for FFEB Geotechnical Consultants, a joint venture. He says the joint venture in the last two years has accomplished work that previously would have taken 15, “using more tools” in the process. “What we are doing here today, people will expect in the future,” he says. Video Photo: Angelle Bergeron /
California officials hope to soon begin holding public meetings to gather information for a sea-level-rise assessment report that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has asked the National Academy of Sciences to prepare by Dec. 1, 2010. But finding money for the contract is an issue. Slide Show Source: UACE Sacramento District Related Links: Engineers Focus On Big Delta Threats Contractors Brace for a Workstorm as Louisiana Projects Surge Building With Nature by Weaving Defenses Connecting the Rocks Defining Protection To Know the Risk Climate-Proofing Rotterdam Schwarzenegger asked the academy in November to convene a panel with representatives from the state’s resources
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