Love and marriage, horse and carriage, levee and pumping station–it’s not as poetic, but the latter is a powerful pairing of infrastructure to protect low-lying assets. And a pumping-station expansion project now beginning in Texas shows how drainage-system design has evolved over the past century, benefiting from the experience of older systems like that of New Orleans. click here to view diagram Related Links: Stronger Storms Expose Vulnerabilities in Flood Defenses Levee Ring Keeps a South Florida Lake Seeking a Way Out Central California Levees Have State Flirting with Disaster It�s Either a Great Plan or �Nutty� Velasco Drainage District,
Pests. Failure of delta agricultural levee in 2004 may have been caused by burrowing critters. It flooded 12,000 acres and caused $100 million of damage. (Photo courtesy of California Department of Water Resources) California’s 1,600-mile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levee system is at risk. Water resource managers and engineers say that the old and frail network has a protection level strong enough for only a 100-year flood event, offering less security than floodwalls in New Orleans. A magnitude 6 quake nearby, they say, could shut Central California’s water delivery system, which serves 20 million people–two-third’s of the state’s population. Built to
Glen Gebhardt, an engineer with River Islands, the developer of a town planned for a vacant tract in the Delta town of Lathrop, hired Concord, Calif.-based Independent Construction Co. in mid-September. The job was construction on six miles of what will eventually become 300-ft wide crown levees with slopes of 10:1 at a cost approaching $1 million a mile. Related Links: Stronger Storms Expose Vulnerabilities in Flood Defenses Levee Ring Keeps a South Florida Lake Seeking a Way Out Pump Station Design Is Elevated to New Importance Central California Levees Have State Flirting with Disaster Independent started by excavating 6
Multimedia: A Deadly Season Tracks of 2005 Hurricanes View in Media Player View in Quicktime Strikes. Overwash to Dauphin Island from Hurricane Ivan (center) is similar to that from Katrina (bottom), which extends further into the bay. (Photos courtesy of USGS) Hurricane Katrina’s pummeling of New Orleans and the coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana exposed the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of hurricane defense systems that go beyond the scope of engineering alone. As people and critical industries have concentrated themselves in the most exposed environments on the North American continent, the nation’s resolve to protect them through environmental measures or
South Florida’s 730-sq-mile Lake Okeechobee has been likened to "a sleepy, fat baby, stirring into tantrums when winds rock her awake." But the dike-encircled lake also is a killer, having burst its banks in hurricanes twice in the 1920s, killing thousands. Click here to view maps "The dike is...a testament to man’s fear of water and weather. It’s a symbol of the Hurricane of 1928 that killed more than 2,000 people. Storytellers that knew of the many undocumented migrants say it was more like 4,000...coffins ran short...piles of people were buried in a large pit in Pahokee...bodies were burned in
For large specialty contractors, 2004 was a very good year and 2005 will likely continue that prosperity. But many industry executives worry that this might just be good news piled on top of bad news. New trends may yet expose old market uncertainties. Most major contractors seem to believe the market will continue to be strong, fueled by the passage of federal transportation and energy funding bills and with looming hurricane recovery funding. But they remain cautious over materials prices, a possibly overbuilt residential market and recent hurricanes’ impact on the overall economy. The complete 2005 Top 600 Specialty Contractors
No-Fly Zone. Facilities owns the space a foot above the top chord, production owns the floor. (Images courtesy of General Motors) General Motors Corp.’s World Wide Facilities Group has taken the leap and rather than fall, it has flown. The GM staff who build the plants that make cars that roll all over the world decided to lock in plant designs as virtual models and then tell the contractors: "Go build THAT!" "It’s a breakthrough change in the way we do business," smiles August Olivier, GM’s director of capital projects. He was talking about two automotive plants under construction in
Thirty years ago, when Jack Padgett first wrapped his hands around the levers of an earthmoving machine, he never dreamed that the vehicle one day would tell him what to do. Today, the 51-year-old operator sits in the air-conditioned cab of a hydraulic excavator, gripping two control joysticks like a kid in a video arcade. His guide is not a set of paper plans, but a tiny computer screen that displays a three-dimensional model of the jobsite. It guides him in real time as he shapes the earth. More jobsites are using global positioning systems to pinpoint survey stations and
(Photo by Michael Goodman for ENR) Hurricane Katrina is expected to give inflation in the construction industry a second wind. Prior to the storm, the industry gradually was recovering from last year’s resurgence of inflation. While it is too early to determine the full impact of the storm on construction costs, the uncertainty it has stirred up undoubtedly will lead to higher bids for projects just to cover the new level of risk. Katrina initially shut down projects in the area and put many others on hold. But that will not dent the tremendous demand for labor and materials being
Repair efforts for Mississippi and Louisiana infrastructure are crystallizing, particularly for Hurricane Katrina-devastated U.S. 90. Work on the worst-hit bridges in both states was under way or, in some cases, even completed by Sept. 12. Mississippi’s U.S. 90 remains impassable from Bay St. Louis to Ocean Springs. Some 30% of the 35 miles between the U.S. 90 bridge at Biloxi and Ocean Springs and the Bay St. Louis Bridge was irrevocably damaged, says Greg Grondin, Mississippi Dept. of Transportation area engineer. MDOT hired Huey Stockstill Contractors, Picayune, Miss.; Warren Paving, Inc., Hattiesburg, Miss.; and Mallette Brothers Construction, Gautier, Miss., on
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