Water infrastructure projects would get a boost under legislation to reauthorize the clean water and drinking water state revolving funds at $38.5 billion over five years. The proposal passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on May 14. The bill, which was approved with bipartisan support, would increase the clean water SRF to $20 billion over five years and the drinking water SRF to $14.7 billion over five years. A comparable bill passed the House on March 5, although the House bill only provides funds for the clean water SRF and does not address drinking water. Construction industry groups

Schools and defense were on the agenda on Capitol Hill this week, with the final spending levels far from settled. The House passed a bill on May 14 that would authorize $6.4 billion for green school renovation and modernization projects for fiscal 2010. The bill passed 275-155, largely along party lines. The bill stipulates that funds be used for projects that meet green building standards or equivalent state or local standards. The bill also requires that in 2015—the final year of funding—districts use 100% of the funds they receive for green projects. One of the bill’s key sponsors, Rep. George

U.K. investigators studying the April 6 earthquake that rocked Italy west of Rome, killing some 300 people, found that traditional stone masonry buildings with even basic strengthening survived the temblor. As a result of their findings, the engineers are calling for simple reinforcements of older masonry buildings throughout Europe. Slide Show Photo: Cury Price Court Engineers are calling for retrofits of older stone masonry buildings after an earthquake that rocked an area west of Rome on April 6 killed 300 people. "It was good to see, where there had been upgrades, the buildings performed better," says Tiziana Rossetto, who led

A planned $890,000 realignment of Cleveland’s Inner Belt Bridge over the Cuyahoga River has been postponed because engineers still need to confirm some calculations, according to Jocelyn Clemings, an Ohio Dept. of Transportation spokeswoman. The 4-in. realignment, which officials hope will occur within the next few weeks, will entail raising the west end of the 70-million-ton bridge off its piers, setting it down on lubricated plates and jacking it to the west to free up an expansion joint. The bridge is similar in design to the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed in 2007 in Minneapolis. Photo: AP / Wideworld

New York Yankees fans will have a facility that doesn’t require $1,200 tickets starting on May 23 when the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Metro-North Railroad opens the new $91- million Yankees-East 153rd Street Station. Photo: CCA Civil / Halmar International, LLC Design-built station links to new Yankee Stadium. Photo: CCA Civil / Halmar International, LLC Mostly precast rail station will greet waves of Yankee fans in the Bronx. The largest and newest of Metro-North’s 120 outlying stations, the 55,000-sq-ft facility features twin 850-ft-long platforms to accommodate 10-car trains on four tracks, a 10,000-sq-ft overhead mezzanine and a 425-ft-long, 25-ft-wide

A team led by Spain’s ACS Infrastructure Development has inked a development deal with the North Carolina Turnpike Authority to design, finance and build a new seven-mile-long toll bridge to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The two-lane, $650-million Mid-Currituck Bridge would be North Carolina’s longest bridge. The project would connect U.S. Route 158 on the mainland with the remote northern sector of the Outer Banks. The authority signed a predevelopment agreement on April 30 with Currituck Development Group, led by ACS Infrastructure Development and lead contractor Dragados USA, with Traylor Bros., Evansville, Ind., and Weeks Marine, Cranford, N.J., also on the

Sempra Generation believes in solar power’s bright future: The dust had barely settled at the company’s five-month-old 10-MW photovoltaic power generation plant near Boulder City, Nev., when it announced an expansion to quintuple capacity. The company claims it will create North America’s largest thin-film photovoltaic installation. Photo: First Solar Solar plant is next to Sempra’s 480-MW gas-turbine plant. The unit of San Diego-based Sempra Energy “won’t start construction until we have a [power sales] contract in hand,” says a Sempra spokesman. “We hope to start construction later this year.” Potential buyers could come from neighboring states, all of which have

Federal stimulus funds will help get 7,400 MW of wind-energy and solar-energy projects ready for construction on public lands by the end of 2010, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told the American Wind Energy Association in Chicago on May 5. About $41 million is earmarked for the effort. The Obama administration also plans renewable-energy coordination offices in Arizona, California, Nevada and Wyoming to complete reviews “on the most ready-to-go projects,” he said. The projects will require new transmission lines to carry electricity to markets, including 1,500 kV of capacity in California, nearly 900 kV in Idaho and 1,000 kV in

A California county judge on May 6 ruled that two landowners cannot block access to their property to prevent engineers from studying possible routes for a 600-ft-wide and possibly 50-mile-long canal to help move water from northern sources to Southern California users. About half the owners of 125 parcels have denied access. The ruling in Contra Costa County that said two of them cannot stop the state from collecting biological and geological data on their farms—a ruling sought by state Attorney General Jerry Brown—is the first in the matter. Access requests for another 388 parcels are planned. +Image Map: Nancy

Responding to nearly a year’s worth of media speculation that the May 12, 2008, earthquake in China’s Si­chuan province might have been triggered by the weight of a recently impounded reservoir, an international team of dam experts has returned from China reporting that such an hypothesis “is very unlikely.” Photo: International Commission On Large Dams Zipingpu Dam, reservoir not quake source. The magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake devastated vast areas of the province located in the foothills east of the Tibetan Plateau and killed an estimated 70,000 people. The epicenter was 17 kilometers from concrete-faced rockfill Zipingpu Dam. The dam is