Two proposed Northwest port facilities to export coal to China are facing hurdles. Millennium Bulk Logistics, a subsidiary of Australia’s Ambre Energy North America, with a partial stake owned by St. Louis-based Arch Coal Inc., wants to upgrade the Longview Terminal Facility on the Columbia River, roughly 45 miles downstream of Portland, Ore. But environmental groups, including the Washington Dept. of Ecology, have filed suit against the project, claiming Cowlitz County didn’t follow state law in awarding a shoreline permit. Millennium bought 416 acres of a former aluminum smelter in January. It wants to replace 150 creosote river pilings and

Crews at the U.S. Energy Dept.’s Hanford nuclear-waste cleanup complex in eastern Washington are reactivating a 45-year-old site crane to remove close to 200 waste tanks, each three to 22 ft long, that are contaminated with plutonium. DOE contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. opted to restore the crane as the safest approach to extract the so-called “pencil tanks,” thinly shaped to prevent uncontrolled plutonium releases during the site’s Cold War-era atomic weapons production. Photo: Courtesy of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Revamped crane will lift thin plutonium-tainted tanks to a yard where workers will decontaminate them safely. The 5-ton

The Portland, Ore., Bureau of Environmental Services and Salem, Ore.-based contractor Emery & Sons Construction Inc. on a recent project needed precision to bore a new sewer line beneath two trolley tracks near an existing steam vent in downtown Portland. They turned to an up-and-coming technology: laser-guided boring. Photo Courtesy Of Emery & Sons The laser-guided boring system allows crews to precisely place materials and work in tight spaces. Using a Pella, Iowa-based Vermeer AXIS tool, the laser system provides near-exact placement of a bored tunnel and then pulls the pipe back through when complete—“a marvelous machine,” says Bill Theiss,

Fluor and Boeing have made their desire known to take over management of the government-owned, contractor-operated Dept. of Energy Sandia National Laboratory facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif. Photo courtesy Sandia National Labs Announcing a “teaming agreement,” Irving, Texas-based Fluor and Chicago-based Boeing say they are “ready and willing to bid” to manage the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration facilities, if the opportunity comes up, according to Keith Stephens, Fluor spokesperson. The current Sandia contract, held by Lockheed since 1993, expires in September 2012. “We thought it important to announce our intentions,” Stephens says. “While there is not an

The complex fabrication of a $24.5-million tubular, webbed helix of red steel has set back the completion date for the Santiago Calatrava-designed footbridge in Calgary from fall 2010 to mid-June 2011. Billed as Calgary’s longest single-span structure at 126 meters—twice as long as the next longest—the Peace Bridge’s helical design keeps supports out of the water, using buried abutments on either side of the riverbank. The 6.2-m-wide bridge, double the width of other pedestrian bridges in the area, will serve 5,000 residents daily by connecting two growing neighborhoods to the city center and light rail. The city of Calgary wanted

Two major stadium renovations at Washington state universities are aiming to attract more fans to college football and boost revenue. A $250-million upgrade at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium, Seattle, and an estimated $70-million, smaller rehab of Washington State University’s Martin Stadium in Pullman are pitting rival schools against each other in the stadium upgrade race. Rendering: Courtesy of The University of Washington Husky Stadium, first built in 1920 for the University of Washington’s football team, is set for a $250-million makeover to improve sight lines, add some capacity and correct structural deficiencies. Renovations to Husky Stadium, a 90-year-old

Skanska USA has nearly completed demolition and has begun structural work on the first major renovation in more than 60 years of the student union building at the University of Washington, Seattle. The $128-million overhaul of the 256,000-sq-ft structure will improve its functionality for a campus student population that has nearly doubled in that time to 50,000. Photo:Tom Sawyer For ENR Systems and seismic protection will be improved at student union, built in 1949. Don Kowalchuk, Skanska’s project executive, says that nearly six months of hazardous material abatement during demolition has been tricky. The five-story Husky Union Building is set

Ayear after shifting bridge bents halted work on the $217-million U.S. Route 20 project near Oregon’s coast, engineers are hoping for rain and a solution. Photo: Courtesy of ODOT Unstable soils have kept completion of an Oregon road section in limbo. While over 50% of the new 6.5-mile bypass is complete, four bridges up to 1,100 ft long sit partially constructed. Lateral load from adjacent fill and subsurface ground pressure may have caused two of the 20 bents on the 10-bridge project to shift as much as two inches. Since that discovery in February 2010, crews have been collecting data.

Preliminary work has crews already bustling on a new multibillion-dollar Intel Corp. fabrication plant in Hillsboro, Ore. While Intel has disclosed little about construction costs and project milestones, there can be no hiding a 1.3-million-sq-ft footprint for a facility set to manufacture next-generation 22-nanometer chips. Photo: Courtesy Intel Bill MacKenzie, Intel spokesman, confirms that Hoffman Construction, Portland, Ore., will manage the three-building complex—to include a semiconductor fabrication plant, emergency generator structure and process utility building—in Intel’s existing industrial park. While the buildings will have independent utilities, there also will be “interconnecting trestles, tunnels and product-handling links,” says MacKenzie. A Hoffman

A 55-in.-dia cut into a rebar-reinforced underground concrete tank with hardened nuclear waste, the largest slice ever into such a U.S. Energy Dept. storage structure, went “perfectly” on Dec. 19, says a site cleanup official. Photo: Courtesy of U.S. Energy Dept. Crew lifts an underground concrete waste tank’s plug—wrapped in protective plastic to avoid contamination spread during operation—to install a robotic waste removal arm. In what may become the norm at DOE’s Hanford site in eastern Washington state and possibly at other U.S. waste sites, crews from Boston-based AK Services used a pressurized mix of garnet and water to methodically