With cracks as sharp as the frozen Arctic air, a 1,357-ft steel communications tower in Port Clarence, Alaska, tumbled to the ground on April 28, the first step in the U.S. Coast Guard�s decommissioning of its network of LORAN radio navigation facilities across the country. Photo: Controlled Demolition Inc. Tower demolition is start of Coast Guard decommissioning of aging navigation signal network. The 400-ton, 45-segment triangular steel tower is the largest man-made structure to be felled by explosives, according to Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), Phoenix, Md., which performed the operation as a subcontractor to Jacobs Field Services North America. For

The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE), seeking commercial projects for its energy-efficient commercial buildings program, has extended a call for potential projects until noon Eastern on May 14. DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory had issued both a call for projects, aimed at commercial building owners and operators, and a request for proposals targeted at commercial building technical experts.The RFP deadline for the technical experts remains 3 pm Pacific on May 10. DOE’s national laboratories will use money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to select and fund technical

Unveiled on April 22, the final design for the $1.5-billion Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco will feature high-level seismic and environmental elements. The five-story glass-and-steel station, billed as the Grand Central Station of the West, will consolidate 12 transit operations, including anticipated high-speed rail. Photo: Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects The proposed transit hub would be a 1,400-ft-long structural tube with moment frames. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority hub, designed by New Haven, Conn.-based Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, includes a place-marker for an iconic 1,200-ft-tall tower. Part of a $4-billion mixed-used project, the tower is still the subject of financial

Florida lawmakers passed a $70-billion 2010 budget on the final day of the legislative session on April 30, but raided the state Transportation Trust Fund of $160 million to help fill a revenue gap. “It’s going to defer some more projects, no question about it,” says Bob Burleson, president of the Florida Transportation Builders’ Association in Tallahassee. Kevin Thibault, Florida Dept. of Transportation, says “it’s too early to tell” how the lost revenue will affect planned projects, but it will likely push out start dates. Burleson says the delays could add up to as much as $400 million in deferred

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