Even as the rivers of Middle and West Tennessee are returning to their pre-flood levels, damage estimates are rising rapidly. Nashville Mayor Karl Dean (D) on May 11 raised the damage estimate for the city to $1.56 billion, with 99% of the private sector having been inspected. Absent from the total are public buildings and infrastructure damaged by torrential rain that fell on May 1 and 2. Photo: Aerial Innovations of Tennessee PSC Metals Inc.’s recycling facility southeast of downtown Nashville sits submerged in floodwater after the Cumberland River overflowed its banks. David Penn, director of the Business and Economic

As oil company and government task-force teams struggled futilely for another week to control an offshore oil leak spewing an estimated 5,000 barrels per day into the Gulf of Mexico, forces on land prepared to mitigate the damage when the toxic spill comes ashore. On May 11, Congress commenced hearings on the disaster. On the same day, the federal government began to apply lessons learned from the April 20 disaster. The Obama administration tasked the National Academy of Engineering with running a technical, independent investigation. The U.S. Dept. of the Interior froze offshore drilling permits and announced a restructuring of

More than a week after a May 1 pipe break disrupted water supply in metropolitan Boston and forced two million residents to boil drinking water for 53 hours, authorities and contractors are trying to retrieve a critical pipe connector—which likely may manifest clues as to what caused the break—as well as documents detailing how upgrades to the affected pipe section were designed and installed more than a decade ago. Photo: AP/Wideworld Worker at site of Boston pipe rupture; a critical pipe connector has not been found. The rupture in a 150-ft section of pipe that carries water from the Quabbin

The owners of 19 California coastal powerplants—including two nuclear facilities—may have to spend billions to install closed-loop cooling towers to protect marine life. The state Water Quality Control Board passed regulations on May 4 that require plants using once-through ocean-water intakes for cooling to reduce water use by more than 90%. + Image Image: Southern California Edison Intake protection system at San Onofre is part of a previous $150-million mitigation. The rule, finalized by the board after five years of study and hours of debate, cites estimated annual mortality rates of 2.6 million fish and 19 billion fish larvae from

While environmental groups are cheering a May 4 Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate fly ash, utilities are concerned that potential designation of the material as a hazardous waste could prove costly. Photo: AP/Wideworld Liners would be required in coal-ash ponds to avert accidents like the disaster in 2008. The draft proposal would regulate for the first time coal ash under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Under the proposal, coal plants would be required to retrofit existing impoundments, which typically store the ash in liquid form, with composite liners. Enforcing the Regulation The more than 500-page proposal outlines

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has selected four leading architectural firms—Adjaye Associates, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Foster + Partners and Snø-hetta—as finalists following a comprehensive international search for a firm to expand the museum’s facilities and design a new wing. The final selection of the architect will be announced in September, and the expansion is slated for completion in 2016. The expansion will triple the museum’s gallery and public spaces.

A long-standing, but unfunded desire to restore Louisiana’s barrier islands may be fulfilled if British Petroleum agrees to foot the bill for a proposal to dredge and build up long-eroded islands to stop oil from encroaching on sensitive marshlands. The Chandeleur Islands near the mouth of the Mississippi may be nourished with dredge spoil to shield wetlands from the oil spill spreading in the Gulf. “Right now, it’s just talk, in the infant stages,” says Chris Accardo, chief of operations division for the New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps would have to issue a permit for

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is exploring the potential of another water diversion to keep oil flow from coming ashore. By this weekend, the Corps anticipates the Bohemia Spillway, off the coast of Plaquemines Parish, La., will reach a flow of 800,000 cubic ft. per second. “Spillway is kind of a misnomer,” as the low area that runs from mile 25 from head of passes to mile 40 is not a manmade water control structure, says Chuck Shadie, chief of the Corps’ watershed division in Vicksburg, Miss.  “It is a low spot in the natural bank on the east

Lafitte resident Lanvin LeBlanc has been fishing his entire life. With more than three decades of shrimping under his belt, he single-handedly runs a 38-ft skiff to bring thousands of pounds of shrimp to market each year. Photo: Craig Guillot Nicky Alfonson in front of hundreds of his crab traps he recovered from Louisiana waters after the oil spill. When officials closed the waters to commercial and recreational fishing between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Pensacola Bay in Florida on May 2, LeBlanc was essentially put out of business. “Everything has just been up in the air. This

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is initiating emergency permitting procedures to expedite cleanup in anticipation of oil coming ashore from the April 20 explosion of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Corps districts in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisian indicate that they have cut the normally lengthy permitting process to 24-48 hours as authorized under Nationwide Permit 20, which covers those activities subject to the National Oil and Hazardous Pollution Contingency Plan and are performed in accordance with the Spill Control and Countermeasures Plan. Basically, any oil spill cleanup excavation, dredging or remediation in