Carrying both commuters and water, tunnels have long snaked through the bedrock beneath New York City, but now the labyrinth is growing: Multiple projects are under way totaling nearly $2.5 billion, with several other tunneling jobs on the horizon. Photo: Launch Box Second Avenue subway’s first phase is a $350-million, four-year contract. “Everyone wants these projects done as soon as possible, so we have a flurry of underground activity,” says Gary A. Almeraris, vice president of Skanska USA Civil, Whitestone, N.Y., which has major contracts on three of the region’s biggest tunneling jobs. “This is good news for the New

Despite the financial crisis in southern European Union countries, the Portuguese government has launched construction of a $1.9-billion high-speed railroad to the Spanish border. But it has delayed bidding for a 13-km-long bridge that would carry the line north into Lisbon over the Tagus River. Map: RAVE Photo: RAVE The financial crisis has delayed bids on 13-km-long Tagus River crossing. Portugal’s first high-speed line will extend 165 km from Poceirão, some 34 km south of Lisbon, to Caia, halfway between Elvas, Portugal, and Badajoz, Spain. Due for completion in about four years, the line will carry trains running up to

The Washington State Dept. of Transportation has extended completion of the $1-billion Highway 99 bored tunnel under Seattle to November 2016. Three international teams are vying to build the 56-ft-wide tunnel that will replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. WsDOT will offer technical credits for proposals that set a completion date earlier than 2016. The project will require the world’s largest-diameter boring machine, with drilling to take 13 months.

A regional economic development corporation in Ohio seeks to install the first freshwater offshore wind turbines in the U.S., in the Great Lakes. Cleveland-based Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCo) announced May 24 a long-term partnership agreement with General Electric Co. to supply turbines for LEEDCo’s first 20-MW wind farm in Lake Erie near Cleveland, set to operate in 2012. A 1,000-MW wind farm in the lake is planned for about 2020. LEEDCo has received three responses to a request for proposals for a developer. It expects to announce that partner this month, says Treasurer Richard Stuebi.

A gigantic sinkhole formed May 31 in Guatemala City during heavy rainfall from tropical storm Agatha, which killed at least 146 people in Central America. The hole, reportedly more than 200 ft deep, swallowed a three-story building and most of an intersection. A similar but smaller sinkhole last year in the same vicinity was blamed on faulty sewer lines. City residents speculate that faulty wastewater treatment infrastructure triggered the latest geotechnical breach. The tropical storm swept ashore two days after a volcanic eruption. The first torrent ashore from the Pacific Ocean this year, Agatha created mudslides throughout the region that

Oil industry engineers remained in hope-and-pray mode June 1 as they prepared for another try at controlling the geyser of oil spewing from the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico. On this first day of the Atlantic hurricane season, experts were cringing at the thought of what could happen next if storm Photo: BP BP will try to use a smaller cap to gain control of the wellhead spewing oil from the sea floor. Photo: Angelle Bergeron Cutterhead dredges will be used to build up shoreline berms...if contracts flow. winds drive oil ashore and deep into the marshes. And in

The nation’s first voluntary rating system for sustainable landscapes, called SITES, has selected 175 pilot projects to test its green-landscape design, construction and maintenance program. The goal is to apply “The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009” to real projects to see whether the four-star rating system needs tweaking. Feedback from the pilots will be used to revise the SITES’ final rating system and inform the technical reference manual, scheduled for release in 2013. The fledgling SITES, under development since 2005, is modeled after the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-building rating

Federal courthouses built in the recent construction push appear to have been overbuilt, according to a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in May 25 testimony before the House public buildings subcommittee. While the report’s conclusions are preliminary because it has not yet been reviewed by the federal judiciary and the U.S. General Services Administration, GAO says that the 33 federal courthouses completed since 2000 include 28%, or 3.56 million sq ft of excess space, which cost $835 million to build and $51 million in operating costs based on 2010 dollars. The excess was due to building over congressionally

A Lower Manhattan community board in late May approved a planned mosque and Muslim cultural center near the site of the 9/11 attacks. The center would require demolition of a 153-year-old building two blocks from the World Trade Center site. The plan has drawn criticism from families of 9/11 victims. It must still be approved by New York’s Landmark Preservation Commission.

The New Orleans District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is gearing up for the June 1 start of hurricane season with tests of communications procedures, emergency management and equipment operation, says Heath Jones, a Corps emergency management specialist. Photo: Angelle Bergeron/ENR Water pours out of discharge pumps at New Orleans�s Orleans Avenue Outfall Canal during hurricane preparedness drill May 27. Related Links: New Orleans Surge Protection Grows: Shielding the City's Achilles Heel Nearly five years after Hurricane Katrina brought widespread devastation to New Orleans, the city is better protected against potential storm surge than it has ever been,