As the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act nears its one-year anniversary, waste-cleanup firms anticipate another year of backlog boosts. But their peers in the water and wastewater infrastructure sector hope a U.S.-Canada agreement signed on Feb. 5 will ease “Buy American” tensions that have been dogging progress of their stimulus-funded work. Photo: Courtesy of PCL Design firms and contractors have seen few ARRA drinking-water and wastewater projects. Georgia, Minnesota and Wisconsin have put nearly all their ARRA-financed water projects out for bid, but work in other states is being held up by the ‘Buy American’ requirement. Related Links: As Federal

Transportation agencies have been near the front of the pack in getting American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds out the door. In highways, state depts. of transportation have $16.8 billion in ARRA projects under construction, says David Bauer, American Road & Transportation Builders Association senior vice president. That represents 63% of ARRA’s $26.7 billion in formula highway aid. “If it’s under construction, it’s supporting employment,” he says. Related Links: As Federal Dollars Pour Out, A Second Stimulus Plan Grows Electricity Programs See Work Start to Surge Water, Cleanup Sectors See Mixed ARRA Prognosis Buildings Project List Still Long U.S. Dept.

Photo: Caltrans Slide Show Photo: EarthCam The first permanent deck section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge’s self-anchored suspension span was hoisted onto the bridge’s temporary support steel on Feb. 3. Caltrans says the “historic” lift marks the moment when the action on the permanent sections begins to shift from fabrication to construction of the iconic span. When construction is completed in 2013, the SAS will be the largest of its kind, at 2,047-ft-long, and it will have a single, 525-ft-tall tower. The various sections have different weights, ranging from 559 tons to 1,669 tons. Lengths also vary, ranging from

For the second time in four months a 240-ton leaf of a main Ohio River miter-gate lock has failed, severely restricting shipping and signaling, once again, that it can be perilous to depend on aging infrastructure. Photo: USACE Photo: USACE Snapped Miter anchor arm may have fallen to fatigue. X-rays of the other arms at the lock show no cracks. On Jan. 27, as the main-chamber, downstream gate of the Greenup Lock and Dam, near Greenup, Ky., neared closure, operators heard a pop and the landside leaf canted over, but it did not fall. Mike Keathley, the U.S. Army Corps

Equipment maker Caterpillar Inc., Peoria, Ill., said on Feb. 8 that it would join the FutureGen Alliance, a public-private partnership set to build a 275-MW clean-coal powerplant in Mattoon, Ill., although it did not disclose the amount of its investment. Caterpillar’s announcement follows a similar move on Jan. 30 by Chicago-based Exelon Corp. Caterpillar, which manufactures coal mining equipment, says the alliance will help demonstration carbon-capture and sequestration technologies that are “absolutely essential” to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. It is the alliance’s 11th member. FutureGen still awaits word from the U.S. Energy Dept. on whether the agency will back the $1.5-billion

The switch barely has been flipped on the flow of stimulus-related electricity projects across the nation. Most contractors say that 2010 marks the beginning of a three-year push to construct transmission lines to carry—and smart-grid technology to manage—renewable power. Related Links: As Federal Dollars Pour Out, A Second Stimulus Plan Grows Transport Sector Sets Rapid Pace Water, Cleanup Sectors See Mixed ARRA Prognosis Buildings Project List Still Long “What we have seen is a lot of projects out there that are getting into the funnel, and there’s an effort to push them out and get them going,” says Tim Gelbar,

The Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power is developing a plan to turn the dusty dry lake bed of Owens Valley, Calif., into an 80-sq-mi, 5-GW solar park. The sea of photovoltaic cells could serve a double purpose, also helping the agency’s efforts to mitigate dust and alkalinity problems. Since 2000, DWP has spent more than $500 million trying to comply with federal clean-air standards to calm the dust from the dry lake bed, which is stirred by local wind conditions that can reach up to 60 mph. Some think the low, densely spaced solar panels could act as

Six marine energy developers in the U.K. have been allocated $35 million of government funding to accelerate prototype production of offshore devices used to convert waves or currents to energy by the not-for-profit company Carbon Trust. Photo: Courtesy of Aquamarine Power A quarter of the world’s wave and tidal technologies are being developed in the U.K. By reducing marine energy costs closer to wind-power levels, “thousands” of devices could be operational around the U.K. by 2020, say CT officials. “Getting the first commercial projects in the water is critical to ‘de-risk’ the technology and attract the necessary private sector investment,”

The U.S. Dept. of Energy is withdrawing its Nuclear Regulatory Commission application for a waste-storage facility in southern Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The move comes after DOE spent decades and $38 billion researching and building at the site. Photo: DOE wasted energy The Energy Dept. on Feb. 1 said it would pull Yucca Mountain’s storage application by month’s end. Deep inside the mountain, DOE would have stored up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste from 80 sites in 35 states. Spent fuel and defense waste was to go in special containers within a network of tunnels. Government estimates put the construction

Staying just hours ahead of another snow storm expected to hit Virginia’s Dulles International Airport on Feb. 10, about 40 workers from Miller & Long Concrete Construction, Bethesda, Md., installed 65 towers to shore the sole-surviving aircraft hangar unit at the three-year-old United Jet Center. Three other units at the private hangar collapsed during a Feb. 6 storm, which dumped 35.5 in. of wet snow on the facility’s roof. No one was injured during the three collapses, but many of the 14 aircraft were damaged. Photo: AP/Wideworld Failed Roof of manufactured-steel structure in Virginia had at least 35.5 in. of