Related Links: Key Detroit Projects Appear on Track, But Contractors Have Questions Is Detroit's Bankruptcy Filing Credible Or A Charade? (Forbes) Detroit's story is a tale of two cities, one growing and one withering but bound in a record $18.5-billion bankruptcy filing whose resolution will determine the future of both.The city's downtown core and some historic neighborhoods have become hot spots for new businesses and residents. The influx has filled offices and apartments and is generating new restaurant and retail openings.The other city is what's left of a once-vibrant manufacturing hub, abandoned by most of the populace, leaving blocks of
Photo Courtesy PSHMSA Pipe put in place in 1948 split along a 22-ft section near the weld seam. Related Links: Arkansas Spill Zone Residents Await Plan to Return Home; New Leak in Missouri Investigators Probe Arkansas Pipeline Spill ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline break, which dumped more than 5,000 barrels of crude oil in a suburban Little Rock, Ark., neighborhood, was caused by a 65-year-old manufacturing defect, a metallurgical testing report shows.The recent report by Hurst Metallurgical Research Laboratory Inc., Euless, Texas, says "the presence of manufacturing defects," which resulted in "the reduction of the wall thickness in the upset zone of
Related Links: Bankrupt Jefferson County, Ala., Raises Sewer Rates Jefferson County Files for Bankruptcy After Talks With Creditors Break Down Jefferson County, Ala., will wipe out more than $1.2 billion of sewer debt and residents will face smaller sewer rate increases if the plan to exit its historic $4.2-billion municipal bankruptcy is approved later this year.The plan, filed on June 30, will be submitted to Judge Thomas Bennett in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Northern District of Alabama in August and go before creditors for a vote before another hearing in November.Final approval would free the county to start issuing
Rendering courtesy of Kentucky Transportation Cabinet The Lagoon Bridge, now under construction near Kentucky Lake, is the first phase of the replacement for the Eggners Ferry Bridge over the Tennessee River. Related Links: After Quick Fix, Kentucky Span Replacement Starts in October Shipwreck Log posts for MV Delta Mariner The Delta Mariner cargo-ship bridge crew relied on a contract pilot’s direction and didn’t use all the written and electronic navigation charts available before the ship collided with the Eggner’s Ferry Bridge near Aurora, Ky., the National Transportation Safety Board says.The agency’s investigation of the January 2012 incident found fault with
One month after a pipeline rupture sent 210,000 gal of heavy crude oil through an Arkansas neighborhood, officials announced initiation of a “reentry plan” so residents can start returning to their homes.That return will be “over the next few weeks,” according to a statement from the city-county-EPA-ExxonMobil command headquarters in Mayflower, Ark., near Little Rock.“We are working with the construction crews and local Unified Command now to try to finalize the details around dates/times for these questions, but we don’t have that just yet,” Russ Roberts, ExxonMobil spokesman, says in response to questions about when homes would be available for
Related Links: Demo Crew Member Killed at Gatlinburg, Tenn., Plant Where Two Workers Died Last Year Tennessee Contractor Fined $7,150 for Bridge Fatality Two workers were killed and a third injured when a 25-foot wall collapsed at a Goodwill Industries building under construction in Hendersonville, Tenn.The April 18 incident killed Joel Pineda Muniz, 24, of Nashville and Jose P. Velasco-Sanagustin, 37, of Bethpage, Tenn. The third man, Jeff Costello, 44, of Scottsville, Ky., was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and was released the next day.Costello and Velasco-Sanagustin were employed by Thorne’s Excavating Co. of Lebanon, Tenn., and
Related Links: Expert: Seam Failure May be to Blame for Mayflower Oil Spill INFOGRAPHIC 13 Oil Spills in 30 Days The ExxonMobil pipeline that ruptured in Mayflower, Ark., has now been removed and sent to an independent lab for third-party testing while cleanup of the 5,000-barrel spill continues.The 52-ft section of the Pegasus pipeline was lifted out April 15 but the cause of the spill remains under investigation, according to ExxonMobil. It is not known when the pipe testing will be completed.The pipeline had a 22-ft.-long, 2-in.-wide gash, according to Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel. His office has launched an
Related Links: Pipeline Specialists Profit From Safety, Not Shale Boom Pipelines Scrutinized After Yellowstone Spill Investigation and cleanup crews remained on duty in Mayflower, Ark., following the March 29 ExxonMobil Pegasus pipeline rupture, which spilled thousands of barrels of Canadian crude and triggered evacuation of nearby homes.As of April 2, on-site state, federal and corporate officials had not yet determined the cause of the spill and could not predict when it would be repaired or when residents of the 22 evacuated houses could return.An engineer from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) reported a
Two former employees of Trojan Labor of Nashville LLC charge in a federal lawsuit that the company violated wage and hour laws and docked their wages for safety equipment it should have provided.John T. Taylor and Michael J. Dooley are seeking class action status for themselves and all similar employees of the temporary staffing firm over the past three years.Workers had to report at Trojan Labor offices as early as 4 a.m. to sign in and get a “work ticket,” but had to wait there before going in a mandatory carpool to the jobsite, according to the suit filed Feb.
Related Links: Repairs Under Way on Highway Closed by Landslide in the Smoky Mountains Phillips & Jordan Inc. of Robbinsville, N.C., won the contract Feb. 20 and started immediately to replace the 200-ft section of US 441 in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that was wiped out by a landslide.First comes an access road to the bottom of the site and removing 27,000 cu yds of excavation, then filling the football-field-size slide area with 40,000 cu yds of crushed stone that will be “sandwiched” in 1.5-ft layers between layers of geogrid, said Dudley Orr, vice president of Phillips &