The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to revise rules governing nitrogen-dioxide air emissions, the first new NO2 standards in more than 35 years. The June 26 proposal includes a new one-hour standard of 80 to 100 parts per billion and would add monitoring for NO2 within 50 meters of major roads in cities with populations of 350,000 or more. EPA would keep the present annual average standard at 53 ppb.

With a multibillion-dollar hole expected to appear in the Highway Trust Fund in August, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has boosted his estimate of how much the repair will cost. LaHood has picked up support in the Senate for his proposed legislative vehicle, an 18-month extension of the current highway-transit law, which lapses on Sept. 30. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee leaders back a different plan, a six-year highway and transit bill, which cleared subcommittee on June 24. Lawmakers, state agencies and construction companies are waiting anxiously to see how the trust-fund remedy will be financed. Photo: Utah Department of Transportation

The Dept. of Energy has announced final regulations that set higher efficiency standards for residential and commercial lighting. The rules, issued June 26, apply to general-service fluorescent lamps (GSFLs) and incandescent reflector lamps (IRLs), which together account for about 45% of total lighting-energy use, DOE says. Under the rules, which take effect in 2012, electricity used in GSFLs would be cut by 15% and 25% in IRLs DOE says the cost of the more efficient lamps would be as much as 13 times higher than current GSFL products’ prices and 47% to 64% higher than current IRL prices. But it

Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority has settled in full with the insurers of URS Corp., San Francisco, for $74.75 million in claims for the 2004 collapse of a section of elevated highway during construction. Three piers sank under a 140-ft post-tensioned section in April 2004 on the 9-mile-long Reversible Express Lanes project. One of them sank 11 ft and the others a few inches, says Sue Chrzan, Authority spokeswoman. The mediated agreement was reached without determining a cause of the collapse. FIGG Engineering Group, Tallahassee, Fla., designed the box-girder structure, and the Authority will receive $750,000 previously escrowed for claims resolved with

States may begin chasing lucrative High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail grants as early as July 10 by submitting “pre-applications” for up to $8 billion of economic stimulus funds. The Federal Railroad Administration released guidelines on June 17. “It will be illuminating to see which projects are ready to progress, on what time frame and at what cost,” says Donald M. Itzkoff, partner, Nossaman LLP, Washington, D.C. Detailed applications are due by Aug. 24 for grant categories called “Tracks” 1, 3 and 4 and Oct. 2 for “Track” 2. “These documents will be hundreds of pages long,” says Richard J. Peltz, senior

Officials say the catastrophic 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minnesota that killed 13 people revealed shortcomings in visual bridge-inspection techniques, particularly of gusset plates and other components. Mark Bagnard, lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, told attendees at the annual International Bridge Conference, held this year in Pittsburgh on June 14-17, that the state’s load ratings of bridges were inadequately measured and did not include gusset plates. As far back as 2003, photos showed the gusset plates were bowed. “Despite the photos, this bowing was not reported in either of two inspections.…One inspector actually saw

T op bridge contractors and designers have formed a group dedicated to better ways of funding and building bridges. Spearheaded by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), the Bridge Policy and Promotion Council will promote alternative funding methods like private-public partnerships, as well as high-strength materials and high-tech building and inspection tools. “What we have attempted to do is to get key players...together under the banner of ARTBA to enhance the lobbying effort, get our thoughts into the legislation and influence the [six-year federal transportation] reauthorization,” says BPPC Chairman Robert Luffy, president and chief executive officer of Coraopolis,

Officials at the nation’s largest drinking-water association called for a new mechanism to fund water infrastructure that is generating buzz on Capitol Hill: a national infrastructure bank. Meeting for their yearly conference June 14-18 in San Diego, American Water Works Association officials announced they would work with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., to push for legislation that would establish a bank to support water infrastructure projects. The current credit crunch has made it “hard for communities to access capital for critical infrastructure projects,” despite the infusion of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, said Michael Leonard, AWWA’s 2008-2009 president

House and Senate floor votes are the next steps for a $105.9-billion war funding bill that includes $4.5 billion for defense and nonmilitary construction. Conferees from the two chambers on June 11 reached agreement on the package, which focuses mainly on aid to continue the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the measure’s construction allocations is $2.8 billion for Dept. of Defense projects; of that, $751 million is for DOD hospitals. The conference agreement also contains $922 million for State Dept. embassies, including $736 million for facilities in Islamabad. The Army Corps of Engineers would receive $797 million under

The issue of jurisdiction for siting transmission lines continues to simmer. A federal appeals court ruled in February that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission lacked authority to overrule state decisions denying applications for new lines. FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff told a House panel on June 12 he disagreed with the appellate court’s ruling but said he had not decided yet whether to appeal it to the Supreme Court.