Construction crews hit water on July 6 while digging 600 ft below Lake Mead in southern Nevada for the third “straw” water tunnel. The incident, which was not life-threatening, will delay the project’s progress by months. Vegas Tunnel Constructors LLC––a joint venture of S.A. Healy Co., Lombard, Ill., and Impreglio S.p.A., Sesto San Giovanni, Italy ––won the $447-million design-build contract in March 2008. On June 28, an underground fault breached, causing water seepage for four days and making work in the tunnel impossible. Workers were building a 100-ft-long starter shaft for the $25-million Herrenknecht 1,500-ton tunnel-boring machine for a 20-ft-dia,

Florida Dept. of Transportation officials and their advisers aren’t likely to forget the year 2008. FDOT was trying to close on two different billion-dollar-plus public-private partnerships, but the financial markets were collapsing. In September, while still restructuring the year-delayed Port of Miami Tunnel (POMT) deal, FDOT accepted bids for a $2-billion Interstate 595 expansion. Just days later, emblematic of market conditions, the financial giant Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. “Credit was just not obtainable,” recalls Jeff Parker, founder of Jeffrey A. Parker & Associates Inc., Chilmark, Mass., a financial adviser to FDOT. “The bid assumed $900 million in private activity

Causes and solutions are proving elusive on an Oregon bridge project in which two bents moved out of plumb during construction. Last winter, the trouble was noticed on the $215-million U.S. 20 Pioneer Mountain-Eddyville highway near the Oregon coast. Joe Squire, project manager for the Oregon Dept. of Transportation, says a lateral load from adjacent fill and subsurface ground pressure may have caused the shifts in two of the 20 bents on the 10-bridge project. The project consists of a six-and-a-half mile section of new road that bypasses a 10-mile stretch of substandard highway. Six of the 10 bridges are

The Washington State Dept. of Transportation describes the highway off-ramp improperly built on a new interchange in east Tacoma as “unfortunate and embarrassing.” It’s also expensive. A change order for nearly $900,000 —out of the project’s contingency fund at the cost of WSDOT—was worked out with project contractor Guy F. Atkinson Construction. The Broomfield, Colo.-based contractor already has started removing retaining-wall panels to flatten the ramp, which was mistakenly built at the wrong grade. Photo: WSDOT Demolition begins for the fix to a wrongly placed Tacoma, Wash., interchange ramp. The eastbound ramp of the $119.9-million Nalley Valley interchange—at which Interstate

How do you pack the construction of four new 14-mile- long lanes, 58 new bridges and 900,000 sq ft of retaining wall into an active highway carrying 200,000 daily vehicles and do it in four years? Virginia’s Capital Beltway expansion team would answer: Pack all the players into one room—early and often. Then, as Virginia Dept. of Transportation senior project manager Larry Cloyed says, the team has to live by the motto “Get it done.” The $1.35-billion reconstruction of the Capital Beltway—including the addition of two high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes in each direction—is being performed by a private concessionaire that

Alyeska Pipeline CEO Kevin Hostler will retire from management of the 800-mile Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) in September, three months earlier than planned. “Retiring at the end of September is good for the pipeline,” Hostler, 55, said in a statement. Photo: courtesy Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. Alyeska Pipeline CEO Kevin Hostler Hostler announced on July 7 that his last day is September 30. Members of the TAPS Owner Committee are now looking for a new CEO and will appoint an interim CEO if the position is not filled in time. Hostler’s announcement will not alter controversial staffing or maintenance

A permanent end to a seemingly endless torrent of oil gushing from a runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico appeared in sight in mid-July as BP successfully installed a sealing cap on the wellhead—a crucial step in shutting it down. The cap was bolted on even as a drilling crew was coming close to intersecting the well bore almost 13,000 ft below the seabed with one of two relief wells being drilled nearby. Their aim is to pierce the well bore and kill the well by choking it with drilling mud and cement. BP is owner of the Macondo

Following the July 8 decision by a U.S. appellate court in New Orleans to uphold a lower court’s ruling that lifted the Obama Administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, the U.S. Dept. of the Interior on July 12 said its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will issue narrower “suspensions” that will curtail most deepwater drilling activities through Nov. 30. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the new suspensions will apply to drilling operations that use subsea blowout or surface preventers on floating facilities. The suspensions allow for some limited deepwater drilling to continue, including emergency drilling related

Critics contend that the new emissions targets in a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule for sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides carried downwind from powerplants in 31 eastern states and the District of Columbia could be difficult to achieve, but environmental advocates say the new proposal will result in cleaner air. EPA says the proposed rule, which EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson signed on July 6, would cut SO2 emissions by 2014 by 70% from 2005 levels and trim NOx emissions by 52%. Gina McCarthy, EPA’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, says the proposal is a “large and important step in

Causes and solutions prove elusive on an Oregon bridge project where two bents moved out of plumb during construction. The troubled was noticed in the winter on the $215 million U.S. 20: Pioneer Mountain-Eddyville highway near the Oregon coast. Joe Squire, project manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation, says that a lateral load from adjacent fill and sub-surface ground pressure may have caused the shifts in two of the 20 bents on the 10-bridge project. The project consists of a six-and-a-half mile section of new road that bypasses a 10-mile stretch of substandard highway. Six of the 10 bridges