The amount of federal economic-stimulus work continues to grow, with the April 15 announcements that the Interior Dept.’s Bureau of Reclamation has committed $1 billion to projects throughout the West and that the Environmental Protection Agency is dividing $600 million among Superfund projects at 50 sites. Photo: Bureau of Reclamation Red Bluff Diversion Dam to get pumping plant. BuRec included about 30 large projects and an unspecified number of smaller ones that it plans to finance through the stimulus, the title of which is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). California will receive the largest share at $260 million.

A flurry of April announcements illustrates how the White House is moving to fill top spots at federal agencies that oversee major construction programs. The designees need Senate confirmation, but the lineup is winning praise from industry officials. At the Dept. of Transportation, Obama’s pick to be under secretary for policy, Roy Kienitz, an aide to Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell (D), “is a person who hasn’t been captured by conventional thinking,” says John Doyle, special counsel for law firm Jones Walker LLP. Doyle was a lead House staffer and Kienitz a key Senate aide in drafting the 1991 Intermodal Surface

Lists of stimulus-funded projects are now rolling out of federal agencies, but there are still many questions about how government entities will effectively manage the nearly $135 billion in work hitting the market in coming months. With many agencies hampered by staff cutbacks in key areas such as procurement and contract oversight, federal officials are seeking answers from within their ranks and debating the need to tap private industry for help. Many project-management and construction-management firms believe trends are in their favor. Photo: AP / Wideworld Obama meets road crews at DOT headquarters while marking transportation stimulus milestone. Todd Wager,

The Environmental Protection Agency on April 15 announced its plan to distribute $600 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds for cleanup at 50 Superfund sites across the United States. The EPA says the funding will accelerate the hazardous waste cleanup already underway and fund new cleanup projects at the sites. Meanwhile, that same day, the Interior Dept. announced that it would distribute $260 million in economic recovery investments through the Bureau of Reclamation for drinking water projects to help address the devastating drought in California. Overall, BuRec will distribute $1 billion in ARRA funds for water project

The Environmental Protection Agency announced on April 8 that it would distribute $197 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to assess and clean up leaking underground storage tanks. EPA estimates that these funds will contribute to at least 1,600 cleanups around the country and create or save a significant number of jobs. “We’re providing immediate growth opportunities for communities across the nation, as well as long-term protection from dangerous pollution in the land and water,” says EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. The stimulus funds will inject badly needed dollars into EPA’s program to clean up petroleum leaks from

As American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) dollars begin to roll out from the Environmental Protection Agency, states are scrambling to develop and implement their plans to distribute the funds to local communities and utilities. In some cases, money has already been distributed; in others, the agencies responsible for distribution are waiting for EPA to work out the details of how the money will be allocated. Photo: AP/ Wideworld The big boost in DOE nuclear work could overwhelm current DOE staff. Photo: WASA Typical projects include drinking-water rehab work. But while funding may be merely a trickle now, agency and

Sen. Arlen Specter’s announcement that he would not support a cloture vote on the Employee Free Choice Act may stall action for now on the bill, the center of a fierce fight between labor unions and business groups. But construction union and industry officials are not ruling out a vote on the measure before Memorial Day. Major retailers now are proposing a compromise. “I won’t be satisfied that the bill is dead until Congress adjourns…in 2010,” says Stephen Sandherr, chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors, which opposes the legislation. Specter, the lone Republican to vote to close debate

President Obama has chosen J. Randolph Babbitt, former president of the Air Line Pilots Association, as his nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration, the White House said on March 27. Senior officials of airport associations praised Babbitt’s knowledge of the aviation industry. James C. May, president of the Air Transport Association, called him “a superb choice” for the top position at the FAA.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood continues to like the idea of a national infrastructure bank. Testifying at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on March 24, LaHood suggested that public-private partnerships and an infrastructure bank could help supplement the Highway Trust Fund in financing major projects. “The Highway Trust Fund is simply not going to allow us to do all that we need to do,” he said. The committee hearing is part of its preparation for the next surface transportation bill. LaHood also told the panel that hiking the motor-fuels tax should be off the table. “In these hard

Jonathan Z. Cannon, President Obama’s pick to be the Environmental Protection Agency’s deputy administrator, has withdrawn as a candidate, saying that a group on whose board he had served “has become the subject of scrutiny.” A 2007 EPA inspector general’s report said the group, America’s Clean Water Foundation, didn’t comply with federal financial, program management and procurement standards for EPA grants it received. Cannon said on March 25, “While my service on the board of that now-dissolved organization is not the subject of the scrutiny, I believe the energy and environmental challenges facing our nation are too great to delay