Related Links: First Report of the Jefferson County Sewer System Receiver Officials of Jefferson County, Ala., and the state are negotiating with creditors for another week while they try to avoid a $4.1-billion bankruptcy filing. All it took to reach this point is bad spending on a sewer system overhaul, bad financing and changing of the county's debt structure. If county officials decide to seek protection from creditors, it may become the biggest municipal bankruptcy ever. Jefferson County includes Birmingham, Alabama's biggest city.The Jefferson County Commission and creditors agreed July 28 to postpone until Aug. 4 a decision on filing after creditors
Related Links: Missouri Basin Flood of 2011 map and infographic The Missouri River, engorged by record rains and snowfall, has flooded thousands of acres in the Midwest and will remain out of its usual channel until October, says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' water management chief.The Corps has reduced outflow from earlier record levels at five of its six dams on the Missouri, but water continues to pour out of Gavins Point Dam in Yankton, S.D., at a rate of 160,000 cu ft per second until Aug. 1, when the rate is scheduled to drop gradually.As the eight states
The cities of Binghamton and Johnson City, N.Y., and their Joint Sewer Board have filed a $20-million suit against 12 companies, charging them with professional negligence and malpractice after a 100-ft wall collapsed in May.The suit, filed July 22 in Broome County Supreme Court, also cites breach of contract and seeks “repair and replacement of various design and construction errors at the Binghamton-Johnson City Joint Sewage Treatment Plant, including, but not limited to, replacement of collapsed exterior walls, defects in design and construction of the Phase III improvements, methanol and BAF systems, removal of debris, replacement of filtering materials” and
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reducing releases from six dams on the Missouri River as the reservoirs behind them empty the runoff of record snowfall and record spring rains. Related Links: Blame Game As River Rises Near South Dakota Homes The reductions will slow the record flow that has sent the 2,341-mile river over its banks and strained levees in six states.At Fort Peck Dam in Montana, the Corps started cutting back releases July 20 to 35,000 cubic feet per second from 40,000 cfs. On Aug. 1 the release will be cut to 30,000 cfs. Similarly, the Corps
Binghamton and Johnson City, N.Y., officials are waiting for a state report that could shut down their jointly owned and operated wastewater treatment plant for safety issues after a treatment cell wall collapsed last month, dumping 580,000 gallons of partially treated wastewater into the Susquehanna River.Only seven non-union employees are entering the area after 41 union workers complained about the safety of the plant's biological aerated filtration (BAF) treatment system section and a leaking roof in the facility's control room. The BAF system was installed as part of an upgrade in 2004-2006.The New York State Dept. of Labor conducted an
The Missouri River, fed by record runoffs from a massive snowpack and heavier-than-normal spring rains in seven states, is in overflow mode and will continue that way through most of August. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is managing the river with releases from six mainstream dams, five of them discharging or ramping up to discharge 150,000 cubic feet per second and the sixth churning through 65,000 cfs.The Corps is watching its own levees and working with state and local sponsors on other levees to repair three breaches in Iowa and prevent others.The challenge now and the next two months:
The Tennessee Dept. of Transportation has suspended work on nine bridge projects statewide pending a safety review after a second worker fatality within four months on a Knoxville bridge job. Mount Juliet, Tenn.-based Britton Bridge LLC and its affiliate, Mountain States Contractors LLC, got the work suspension order on May 25, one day after a worker was struck in the head and killed by a falling chunk of concrete on the Henley Street Bridge in Knoxville. Britton voluntarily suspended work after that accident. The worker, Solin Estrada-Jimenez, 47, of Chattanooga, was initially identified as Rodolfo Bustillos. Family members said that
Municipal and plant officials continue to look for the cause of the May 16 collapse of a 100-ft wall at the wastewater treatment plant serving Binghamton and Johnson City, N.Y. The event triggered a 580,000-gal spill of partially treated wastewater into a local creek and the nearby Susquehanna River. Four of the plants 20 filtration cells were destroyed when the 15-ft tall, 18-in thick wall fell.A post-construction quality audit of the plant, issued in February by LMK Engineers LLC of Pottstown, Pa., found more than 150 deficiencies that it blamed on inadequate construction management.Design and configuration control during construction and
While the Corps of Engineers has started to open the Bonnet Carré Spillway above New Orleans, the agency has asked permission but has yet to decide whether to open the upriver Morganza Spillway to divert the floodwaters from the Mississippi's main channel. Photo by AP Worldwide/Lance Murphey BEALE STREET BLUES The landmark musical thoroughfare in Memphis, Tenn., is inundated on May 9 as the Mississippi River was reaching its highest level since the ruinous flood of 1937. Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, president of the Mississippi River Commission and commander of the Corps' Mississippi Valley Division in Vicksburg, decided to
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which exploded a Mississippi River levee late on May 2 to relieve pressure on floodwalls at Cairo, Ill., is starting preparations for a similar diversion in Louisiana next week. The Corps pumped explosive slurry from barges into pipes in the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway in Missouri, flooding 130,000 acres of farmland to drop river levels. Water streamed through the breached levee at a rate of 550,000 cu ft per second. The river level at Cairo fell to 60.2 ft by noon on May 3 from 61.72 ft late the previous day. “We executed the