Ethiopia has awarded Italy’s Salini Costruttori a $4.8-billion contract for the construction of Africa’s biggest dam on the Nile, in Ethiopia, despite stiff opposition to the project from both Egypt and Sudan. Image courtesy Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation The Grand Millenium dam will be 145 meters high and 1,800 meters long, with powerhouses on either side of the spillway. Related Links: China Inks Deal for Kariba Dam Upgrade Opposition could make financing the project difficult, officials say.The 5,250-MW-capacity hydropower dam, the Grand Millennium, has raised tension between Ethiopia and Egypt, with Egypt claiming the project will have a negative impact
One month after announcing ambitious plans to dig a 50-km-long shipping canal 100 km west of the Bosphorus Strait, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s scheme is being dismissed by some as election grandstanding designed to gain leverage for Turkey in talks with Russia to secure commitments of crude for the languishing Samsun-Ceyhan oil pipeline project. The proposed 50-km-long canal to bypass Turkey's Bosphorus would be wide enough to accomodate two tankers in either direction. The canal is located 100 km west of the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey and would connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The grand canal scheme, which
The Missouri River, fed by record runoffs from a massive snowpack and heavier-than-normal spring rains in seven states, is in overflow mode and will continue that way through most of August. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is managing the river with releases from six mainstream dams, five of them discharging or ramping up to discharge 150,000 cubic feet per second and the sixth churning through 65,000 cfs.The Corps is watching its own levees and working with state and local sponsors on other levees to repair three breaches in Iowa and prevent others.The challenge now and the next two months:
Construction started this week in southern Colorado on a $2.3-billion, 62-mile pipeline that will transport water north from the Pueblo Reservoir for use by Colorado Springs and several Denver suburbs. Engineers from CH2M Hill, Denver, will rechannel up to 100 million gal. a day of water from the Arkansas River, which fills the reservoir, and pump it uphill more than 1,600 ft in elevation to two new reservoirs that will be located east of Colorado Springs. The 66-in.-diameter pipeline will be built under farms, ranches, suburbs, railroad tracks and four highways, including Interstate 25, which runs along Colorado’s Front Range.
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