New designs, unveiled April on 27 for three bridges, shaves $45 million off Fort Worth’s Trinity River Vision project costs. The $909-million urban waterfront plan aims to connect 88 miles of the river and its surrounding communities. The original total cost for the three bridges was about $155 million. Projected cost using the original design, by Bing Thom, Vancouver, was $114 million, not including another $41 million for costs including land acquisitions. The city of Fort Worth worked with a new design team to present a citizen advisory group with cheaper options. Lead designer Miguel Rosales, president of Rosales +

After nearly a decade of review, the Dept. of the Interior gave the go-ahead on April 28 for the nation’s first offshore wind farm—the $1 billion Cape Wind project, located off the coast of Nantucket. Construction on the project could begin as early as this year, says the project’s developer. But the project is highly controversial, and a broad coalition of historic-preservation and environmental groups, along with Indian tribes, say they will file a lawsuit to attempt to block the project. In response to critics, the Interior Dept. says it will require Cape Wind Associates LLC, the Boston-based developer of

The U.S. Energy Dept. is seeking an additional $9 billion in loan-guarantee authority from Congress for nuclear powerplants so it could approve before Sept. 30 three leading applications that have been submitted by large utilities, according to an agency spokeswoman. If granted, the extra funds would boost DOE’s loan-guarantee authority to $19.2 billion. Agency Secretary Steven Chu would not identify specific beneficiaries. Industry officials say the leading contenders are NRG and Toshiba’s south Texas project, UniStar’s Calvert Cliffs project in Maryland and the South Carolina Electric & Gas Summer project.

Like a hurricane menacing the Gulf Coast, the full damage from the destroyed deepwater oil well in British Petroleum’s Mancando field in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be known for many days. Nor will the cost, now estimated to be in the billions, as offshore crews work tirelessly to keep crude from coming onshore and landside volunteers prepare to begin the massive environmental cleanup. How much is at stake could be read more easily in faces than in financial calculations. “I look in the eyes of fisherman and people making their living on the coast, and you just see fear,”

Crews at the U.S. Energy Dept.’s Hanford nuclear-waste site in Washington state have placed the first of six massive, 50-ton shield doors at the site’s high-level waste treatment facility with a fit no wider than a human hair, say officials of San Francisco-based Bechtel National Inc., design-contractor for the $12.2-billion project on the 560-sq-mile site. Photo: Bechtel National Inc. Crews supervise installation of the first of six 50-ton radiation shield doors at Hanford site. Photo: Bechtel National Inc. The shield door is in a key area of the 65-acre plant complex, which, when completed, will vitrify high-level nuclear waste now

Nashville and Middle Tennessee businesses and individuals are cleaning up and trying to return to thousands of buildings and homes inundated by floodwaters in a “once-in-one-thousand-year event.” Photo: AP/Wideworkd The Grand Ole Opry House and related buildings sitting in floodwater in Nashville. With one of the city’s two water plants still underwater, Nashville and neighboring Williamson County are under a mandatory water conservation order. Power is out, at least until Friday, for a chunk of downtown after floodwaters knocked out underground transformers at a substation. The Cumberland River, which runs through Nashville, crested at 51.9 ft late Monday after 13.5

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hopes to use water diversion structures to push water out of sensitive wetland areas and keep away oil that has been drawing near shore since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. In essence, the Corps is investigating if the rains behind the Nashville flood could help save the Louisiana Coast from the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The unprecedented oil spill is subject to rough winds and tidal flows. Faced with these complications, Chuck Shadie, the Mississippi Valley Division head of

Project managers are struggling with how to remove “Rainier,” a tunnel-boring machine that is stuck 330 ft underground since last year. Until the rig is moved, the area’s $1.8-billion Brightwater treatment plant can’t be finished. + Image Source: King County Original contractor and owner parted ways after TBM bogged down. The parties are negotiating a claim while a replacement team drills ahead. Related Links: Seattle Membrane Plant Treats to Higher Levels “As of May 1, we have no way to remove it and are still working on a plan,” says Gunars Sreibers, project manager with King County, Wash. The tunnel,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on May 4 unveiled a draft rule to regulate coal ash, for the first time, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The proposal would require coal-fired powerplants to retrofit existing impoundments, which typically store ash in liquid form, with composite liners. It also would provide strong incentives to eventually close surface impoundments and shift to dry storage in landfills, EPA says. The new scrutiny follows a 2008 collapse of a Tennessee impoundment that spread ash over a 300-sq-mile area of land and water. Environmentalists claim contaminants in coal ash, such as mercury and arsenic,

A new report from the U.S. Green Building Council highlights more than 30 existing federal programs worth $72 billion that could enhance efficiency in commercial buildings and multifamily housing. Released on April 29, the report concludes the federal government is not fully taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the programs. The report authors note that, as of 2009, green buildings represented only 2% of new residential and commercial construction in the United States. USGBC officials speaking at a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., said they hoped to use the document as a tool to educate policy-makers and building industry