Federal agencies are moving out more federal stimulus aid. The Federal Aviation Administration said March 12 that it had released the first two allocations of its $1.1 billion in airport aid under the stimulus. Those allotments, totaling $12 million, will go to two Pittsburgh-area airports. In addition, the Dept. of Energy said it plans to release to state and local agencies an initial installment of about $780 million of the $8 billion the stimulus provided to DOE for home weatherization assistance and aid to states' energy offices. DOE says that the initial allocations include $471.8 million for the weatherization program

At conferences and on Websites, at research centers and out on windswept coasts around the world, increasing numbers of engineers, scientists, planners and policymakers are gathering to share ideas and lessons learned about a growing threat to one of the linchpins of civilization: the delta regions of the world. Those fragile landforms, built patiently over millennia by the sediment deposited at the mouths of the world’s mightiest rivers, are home to great ports and commercial centers of the global economy. They are, by definition, low and coastal; they also are on the front line to suffer hard consequences from climate

For centuries the Dutch took land from the sea by trapping sediment on tidal flats, diking polders and continuously pumping with windmills to dry the land. Now, faced with a need to bolster a 32-km, sea-facing dike built in the 1930s that turned the IJselmeer into Lake IJsel, an Amersfoort, Nl-based consulting firm, DVH, is proposing a return to old ways: Instead of breaking out heavy machinery and adding width and height to the dike to guard against sea-level rise, it proposes weaving traditional snags of willow reeds on tidal flats to trap sediment on the sea side of the

No city in the world takes climate change and sea-level rise more seriously than Rotterdam. The great port is entwined by the channels of the Maas, Schie and Rotte rivers, which are part of the of the vast delta fed by the Rhine draining Germany, and the Meuse, draining out of France. And it stares directly out at the North Sea from the part of the country known as the Southern Lowlands. As larger cargo vessels abandon a wealth of old shipyards and warehouses in the town to move to bigger docks downstream, redevelopment plans for the huge old port

Elastogran GmbH, a Lemförde, Germany-based subsidiary of BASF Group, has begun commercial sales in Europe of Elastocoast, a system for reinforcing broken rock revetments with a polyurethane binder. Pilot installations to protect several quickly disappearing North Sea German Islands, including Hallig Gröde (shown here) armored in two projects in 2006 and 2007, have performed well. The binder is tumbled in a concrete mixer on-site and spread over a substrate. A Wyandotte, Mich., U.S. branch is working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop design guidelines for U.S. use. Video Photo: Tom Sawyer / ENR Photo: Elastogran Related Links:

Reducing flood risk on the Mississippi River delta is big business. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working with a $14.3-billion appropriation to bring the Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System to 100-year levels of protection by June 1, 2011. Photo: Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure Group Pile driving for $695 million IHNC barrier. Cost expected to climb. Related Links: Engineers Focus On Big Delta Threats Building With Nature by Weaving Defenses California Wants a Sea-Level-Rise Plan, But Money Is an Issue Connecting the Rocks Defining Protection To Know the Risk Climate-Proofing Rotterdam This will be

Although Marie Laveau no longer practices voodoo in New Orleans, another “dark art” —soils testing—is practiced there, under unprecedented scrutiny and at a higher level of intensity than ever before. “The work here is moving state of practice into state of the art,” says Dr. Rai Mehdiratta, program director for FFEB Geotechnical Consultants, a joint venture. He says the joint venture in the last two years has accomplished work that previously would have taken 15, “using more tools” in the process. “What we are doing here today, people will expect in the future,” he says. Video Photo: Angelle Bergeron /

California officials hope to soon begin holding public meetings to gather information for a sea-level-rise assessment report that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has asked the National Academy of Sciences to prepare by Dec. 1, 2010. But finding money for the contract is an issue. Slide Show Source: UACE Sacramento District Related Links: Engineers Focus On Big Delta Threats Contractors Brace for a Workstorm as Louisiana Projects Surge Building With Nature by Weaving Defenses Connecting the Rocks Defining Protection To Know the Risk Climate-Proofing Rotterdam Schwarzenegger asked the academy in November to convene a panel with representatives from the state’s resources

Nuclear powerplant development in the U.K. and U.S. is moving forward with vigor. In the U.K., imminent eBay-style land sales will lead to the first major financial commitments by power companies in the nation’s emerging nuclear-plant program. In the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is processing 17 applications for 26 possible new nuclear powerplants even as new questions arise over whether the government’s Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository will ever open. Photo: NDA Greenfield site next to NDA’s Bradwell powerplant is being auctioned for new units. Construction of a fleet of new plants in the U.K. is not expected to start

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will develop regulations for coal- ash storage by the end of the year, says EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. The March 9 decision comes 10 weeks after a dike burst at a storage impoundment at a Tennessee Valley Authority plant, spilling about 5.4 million gallons of coal-ash slurry. EPA will ask experts to assess the integrity of 300 units across the country that store ash suspended in liquid. It is working closely with dam safety experts because of structural similarities of coal-ash impoundments and dams.