Gainesville Regional Utilities will become the nation’s first utility to offer a feed-in tariff for generation of electricity from solar photovoltaic energy. Starting on March 1, the Florida municipal utility will sign new power purchase agreements for up to 4 MW per year. Sellers with a building- or pavement-mounted installation will receive a guaranteed fixed rate of 32¢ per kilowatt-hour for 20 years. The rate for a free-standing installation will be 26¢ per kWh. GRU has a program offering a rebate of $1.50 per installed watt, with up to 14¢ per kWh paid for excess power sold back to the

New Orleans’ hurricane and storm damage risk-reduction system is much improved since Hurricane Katrina, but protecting lives will continue to require an emphasis on evacuation, especially until 2011, when the 100-year protection levels are scheduled to be in place. The risk remains high. Photo: Angelle Bergeron Debris behind floodwalls are evidence the walls took the load as the water came over. Those are the findings of a reconnaissance team sponsored by the National Science Foundation, through the Geoengineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association. The team’s inspections last October assessed system performance in Hurricane Gustav’s Sept. 1 landfall. The team plans to

Workers are making good progress dismantling and cleaning up the U.S. Energy Dept.’s Oak Ridge former nuclear-weapon factory complex in Tennessee, says a report released last week by site contractor Bechtel Jacobs. But the contractor and DOE acknowledge that some work at its massive K-25 building are behind schedule. Bechtel Jacobs says it removed a bridge structure connecting two sections of the 1.6-million-sq-ft building, which houses uranium-enrichment equipment dating back to the Manhattan Project era and was the world’s largest structure when erected. Cleanup work at the adjacent Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex and other parts

Hundreds of dinosaur tracks and fossils estimated more than 120 million years old have been discovered during construction of a mining road in the highlands of Central Peru. Officials with the Antamina mining company announced the find last week. Photo: Compañía Minera Antamina S.A. Dinosaur footprints discovered during road construction in Central Peru. The discovery was originally made in 2006 during the construction of a road by the company between a crossroads at Conococha and the Antamina’s Yanacancha camp about 250 miles northeast of Lima. A preliminary examination of the site - since dubbed Cruz Planta - uncovered dozens of

The Washington State Dept. off Ecology has proposed a fine of $147,000 against Hanson Pipe and Precast, Tacoma, Wash. for alleged violations of its sand and gravel permit and failure to treat contaminated stormwater. Ecology inspectors cited the company for 27 violations of the pollutant levels specified in its sand and gravel permit from the second quarter of 2007 through the second quarter of 2008. “We will continue our efforts toward and will cooperate fully with Washington State’s Department of Ecology to rectify this situation," says Clifford Hahne, senior vice president of Hanson Building Products’ West region in a written

Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethesda, Md., and Ocean Power Technologies, Pennington, N.J., will work together to develop large, utility-scale ocean-wave-power generation projects in North America. Under the terms of the agreement, Lockheed Martin will manufacture, deploy, operate and maintain the wave systems that have been designed by Ocean Power. Ocean Power’s trademarked PowerBuoy is deployed in 100 ft of water within three miles of shore. The rise and fall of the waves moves a pistonlike structure in the buoy. Lockheed and OPT plan to deploy buoys off the coast of either Oregon or California.

Not a day goes by that Walter Baumy, engineering division chief for the New Orleans District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, doesn’t get a call or visit from someone who says he has a better mousetrap a better product or method for bringing the Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System to 100-year levels by 2011. But since the district is now in an all-out push to meet that deadline by rapidly prosecuting designs and contracts in hand, Baumy is wary of the distractions. Photo: Infrastructure Alternatives The Corps seeks new ideas, like this NASA

With just two months until scheduled completion, contractors at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., are putting finishing touches on the U.S. Navy’s largest hangar, which is being built to make room for five squadrons coming from Maine under the government’s Base Realignment and Closure program. Slide Show Photo: Mortenson Construction Co. Setting times for the clear-span box truss sections improved with repetition. Photo: Mortenson Construction Co. Five squadrons will move from Maine to Jacksonville, Fla. Mortenson Construction Co., Minneapolis, is the design-builder for the $127.7-million project under a multiple award construction contract with the Navy. The scope of

With the help of special skids and common soap, an Oregon contractor has replaced two bridges in two weekends as part of a $46-million design-build project for the Oregon Dept. of Transportation. Slayden Construction Group Inc., Stayton, broke ground on the project in June 2007 and wrapped it up in January, replacing a total of five 80-year-old bridges along Highway 38 between the towns of Elkton and Drain. Photo: Slayden Mammoet’s system allows new span in Oregon to slide sideways into place atop new bents. The project’s biggest challenge arose on two bridges known as Crossing 3 and Crossing 4.

New York state’s Dept. of Transportation is bringing science to snowdrifts. The agency last month presented “SnowMan,” software for optimizing snow fences on existing roads and for designing highways to reduce drifts, at a conference of the National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research Board. Stuart Chen, a professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, who designed the software with Michael Lamanna, a former graduate student, says it can reduce whiteouts and pavement icing and the “extra costs” of snow plowing and deicing salts. Photo: Darrell F. Kaminski, NYSDOT Ten-foot-tall