In July, an eight-pound steelhead swimming up the Elwha River generated more excitement than 15,000 yards of concrete ripped out of a dam that had impounded the watercourse within Washington state's Olympic National Park since its construction 99 years ago.

Gary Brunson, the U.S. Energy Dept. engineering director at the Hanford $12.2-billion Waste Treatment Plant project, claims Bechtel National Inc. is doing such a poor job of managing engineering at DOE's Washington state site that the contractor should be removed.

Photo Courtesy of Washington Closure Hanford N Reactor is the last of nine aging reactors to be partly demolished and sealed for long-term decay of radioactivity. Related Links: Engineering News-Record Architectural Record The last and largest of nine defunct nuclear reactors once used for weapons production at the U.S. Energy Dept.'s huge Hanford site in Washington state has been placed in safe storage, or "cocooned," so its remaining high radioactivity can safely decay, the agency said on June 14.The new status for the site's N Reactor follows a $65-million cleanup and demolition project, which included demolishing the 85,450-sq-ft building to

As part of a $4.65-billion state Route 520 bridge replacement program east of Seattle, Omaha-based Kiewit Corp. and its subsidiary General Construction Co. are working in Aberdeen, Wash., on a $367.3-million project to build 33 of the largest pontoons ever constructed in the state. The pontoons are part of a total of the 77 needed for the overall replacement of the current Seattle-to-Medina floating bridge across Lake Washington.

The Oregon Dept. of Transportation's new plans for the state's historically plagued $217-million U.S. 20 project will focus on culverts as the only viable way to deal with chronic issues of unstable soils and shifting bridge bents.

The U.S. Dept. of Energy's most intricate groundwater circulator will go on line in late June at the Hanford nuclear waste site in eastern Washington.

Shell Canada announced plans in May for Canada’s largest liquefied-natural-gas, or LNG, facility on British Columbia’s central coast near Kitimat. Shell also is considering an option for the future expansion of the facility, dubbed LNG Canada.

The successful completion this spring of twin 2.1-mile-long bored tunnels in Seattle marks a literal breakthrough in that city's troubled history of light-rail construction. It also represents the halfway mark in the 3.15-mile, $1.9-billion project to connect downtown with the University of Washington.The 21-ft-dia tunnels run between Capitol Hill and the university. A Traylor Bros. Inc. and Kemper-Frontier Constructors Inc. joint venture worked under a $309-million contract.

For the James W. Fowler Co. of Dallas, Ore., using a vertical shaft machine made by Germany’s Herrenknecht for a 145-ft-deep, 30-ft-dia launching portal as part of a $32-million sewer upgrade project in Seattle—the first time the technology has been used in the U.S.—was a matter of necessity.

When the U.S. Coast Guard questioned a request for a Section 9 bridge permit for the $3.5-billion Columbia River Crossing project—a proposed 10-lane Interstate 5 bridge connecting Portland, Ore., to Vancouver, Wash.—CRC officials were surprised that years of planning needed to be revisited.