Plans for a $5-billion rail transit extension towards northern Virginia's Dulles International Airport have cleared an important hurdle, with the Federal Transit Administration's Dec. 3 approval of a $900-million, multi-year funding commitment to the project's $2.6-billion first phase. The deal isn't done yet, however. The proposed commitment still needs approval by U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and the Office of Management and Budget. Sarah Echols, a U.S. DOT spokesperson, said, "The department is continuing to review this complex project to ensure it meets all statutory requirements and additional conditions agreed to by the project sponsors." Such reviews traditionally take about

Call it a double-edged sword, a perfect storm or—stealing a quote from Charles Dickens—American Public Transportation Association President William Millar describes the state of transit as, “The best of times, the worst of times.” From California to the Carolinas, the acceptance of and desire for transit systems is unprecedented. Voters in November approved more than 20 pro-transit ballot initiatives, most notably Proposition 1B in California that calls for $9.95 billion for a high-speed rail system stretching from Sacramento to San Diego. Slide Show Photo: California High-Speed Rail Authority Photo: Joseph Caserto/ENR But transit owners, designers and builders have no easy

The 78-year-old Detroit Refinery, owned by Findlay, Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum Co. LLC, currently processes 102,00 barrels per day of crude oil “into products such as gasoline, kerosene, asphalt and diesel fuel,” says Marathon spokesperson Christiane Fox.

Energy companies and builders are laying a foundation for the next round of nuclear powerplants in the U.S., making serious commitments of almost $500 million in recent months.

Construction of new powerplants and transmission lines is most likely to occur in markets where utilities can count on recouping the cost of their investments. Electric utility and construction executives also point to consistent government regulation as key to construction of energy projects. “Capital tends to be there” for investments that are made in markets where there are stable rules, said David Campbell, CEO of Dallas-based Luminant, the power-producing arm of the former TXU Corp., last month at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners annual meeting in New Orleans. “Certainty would be nice, but consistency allows us to come

It is going to take a risk-based strategy on the federal, state and local levels to provide hurricane and flood protection in New Orleans and mitigate risk associated with disasters nationwide. “We are looking at a multihazard approach, multiple lines of defense and nonstructural methods, such as emergency preparedness for mitigating risk,” said Earthea Nance, New Orleans' first director of disaster mitigation planning, at last month’s annual meeting of the American Water Resources Association, in New Orleans. “The traditional disaster-protection paradigm is predicated on a strong federal role and a diminished local role. In New Orleans that resulted in an

Chesapeake Bay advocates are disappointed that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state officials failed to set a firm deadline for reducing nutrient pollution in the 64,000-sq-mile Chesapeake Bay watershed at last month’s annual meeting of federal and state leaders overseeing the cleanup effort. Bay advocates are threatening legal action to force officials to commit to cleaning up the bay. “They didn’t commit to anything that is going to reduce pollution,” says Roy Hoagland, vice president for environ-mental protection and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He says efforts to clean up the bay have been unsuccessful, even though billions of

Construction is beginning on the largest design-build civil works project in the history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a $695-million barrier designed to protect New Orleans from storm surges similar to that generated by Hurricane Katrina, which inundated the low-lying city in 2005. Slide Show Photo: Angelle Bergeron / ENR Surge barrier to protect New Orleans is the largest design-build job in Corps history. Related Links: Behind the Scenes in a Casting Yard Photo: Angelle Bergeron / ENR Mike Spruill Sr. says all his casting jobs post-Katrina are simply bigger. Barrier piles are 140 ft long. The Inner

In an attempt to build a strong case for sustainability, the U.S. General Services Administration is making its green practices public. GSA recently released a collection of case studies and best practices called “Sustainability Matters,” which offers examples of how the agency and its partners have executed sustainable strategies in acquiring, operating and maintaining GSA buildings. The 220-page publication is intended to help firms that work with the agency meet or exceed GSA’s sustainability goals. The agency has steadily increased green initiatives in recent years as it has faced looming federal mandates. These include the Energy Independence and Security Act

Washington state sued the U.S. Energy Dept. Nov. 26 in federal district court in Spokane for failing to meet key milestones for cleaning up 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste at its 586-square-mile Hanford former nuclear weapons site near the Columbia River. Photo: U.S. Energy Dept. Lengthy cleanup of aging waste tanks is lawsuit focus The lawsuit addresses DOE's pace in emptying 177 massive underground waste tanks, many of which date to the 1940s when atomic bombmaking began at Hanford, and are leaking into groundwater. The state is also demanding earlier completion of the site's $12.3-billion Waste Treatment Plant,