Critical Path

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Stopgap measure--the 13th since September 2007--will keep airport construction grants and other Federal Aviation Administration programs going through July 3.

Former ENR newsmakers take new forks in the road of transportation careers.

House Minority leader John Boehner has said that Congress should hold off on passing a Water Resources Development Act in 2010.  His statement follows House Republicans' call for a moratorium on earmarked projects. WRDA bills have contained authorizations for large numbers of Corps of Engineers projects. 

The two-year-old U.S. Embassy building systems in Port-au-Prince came through Jan. 12’s 7.0 earthquake with flying colors for a lot of good, specific reasons. Aside from the obviously soundness of the building's structural design and construction, the survivability of systems was insured by a host of small measures.

Key elements of the Port-au-Prince utility infrastructure came through Jan. 12’s 7.0 earthquake unscathed; but that’s because there wasn’t much of anything there to scathe.And that, in itself, represents a form of resiliency not to be discounted.

Nobody messes with Mimi’s stuff...they appreciate what she is doing too much.

In a way, the damage in Haiti is not about buildings. It’s about confidence. People no longer believe in structures.

It is the small initial accomplishments, like finding your bags, making it through customs without incident, and picking up some local currency, that start you off on a confident footing when you arrive at a foreign destination. Getting through all of that in Haiti these days is a real confidence builder.

We flew from New York City on a flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, April 16, to try to capture a construction-industry perspective on conditions there, a little more than three months after Jan. 12’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake ravaged much of the capital city and surrounding area with 35 seconds of mass death and destruction.

The long-stalled climate change legislation appears to be closer to moving back into the public eye, after months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between its three chief architects in the Senate, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The senators announced this week that they hope to unveil their climate change bill soon.