Industry News Briefs
May 7, 2009 Headlines
Stimulus Promotes Intelligent Transportation Systems Technology
U.S. Natural Gas Industry Goes From Bust to Boom
Industry News
Agriculture Department Allocates $615.8 Million for Rural Water Projects
U.S. Department of Agriculture (04/28/09)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced the selection of more than $615.8 million in water and environmental projects to receive immediate federal funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The projects will help provide potable water and improved wastewater treatment systems for rural towns and communities in 34 states. "Aging water and waste infrastructure systems threaten the ability of rural communities to provide clean, reliable drinking water to residents and protect precious environmental resources," says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "These investments will help bring increased economic benefits to rural America by providing needed water, water systems and creating jobs." The funding will be allocated to 193 projects in all.
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Stimulus Promotes Intelligent Transportation Systems Technology
U.S. Department of Transportation (04/30/09)
The recently passed federal stimulus package includes funding not only for construction projects but also for intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and such systems are already showing their ability to make road construction projects go more smoothly. The U.S. Department of Transportation has developed guidance on the selection and use of work zone modeling and analysis tools that can assist construction project leaders in designing more efficient work zones as well as choosing among the various ITS options for work zone operations. One option is to rapidly deploy portable ITS applications to improve work zone safety and mobility regardless of the work zone location, while another option is for state and local DOTs to readily leverage existing ITS infrastructure such as 511 traveler information systems, detection equipment, and variable message signs where locations permit; a third option is to accelerate the ITS infrastructure installation portion of construction projects where ITS is part of the design. Specific benefits include construction schedule compression; reductions in traffic volumes, vehicle speeds, queue lengths, and crashes in the work zones; and fewer and shorter periods of congestion. For example, the North Carolina Department of Transportation deployed a smart work zone information system on I-95 which resulted in fewer crashes, a significant reduction in vehicle queuing (56 percent), and less traveler delay (55 percent); the Maryland State Highway Administration used a work zone modeling tool to redesign a work zone as part of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge reconstruction to reduce construction time from a planned six months to two months; and the Virginia Department of Transportation found that speed-activated dynamic message signs with warning messages reduced the number of vehicles speeding by 50 percent or more in work zones. In general, there are three categories of its applications applicable to work zones—work zone traveler information systems, work zone traffic management systems, and work zone incident management systems—as well as work zone modeling and analysis tools such as sketch planning tools and lane closure analysis.
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U.S. Natural Gas Industry Goes From Bust to Boom
Wall Street Journal (04/30/09) P. A1; Casselman, Ben
After an era of declining production, the U.S. now has plenty of natural gas, the latest example being a massive natural-gas discovery in northern Louisiana, which could hold some 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, equal to 18 years' worth of current U.S. oil production. Some industry executives think the field, known as the Haynesville Shale, could be several times that size. "There's no dry hole here," says Joan Dunlap, vice president of Petrohawk Energy Corp. Large new fields also have been found in Texas, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania, and one study estimates the U.S. has more than 2,200 trillion cubic feet of gas waiting to be pumped, enough to satisfy nearly 100 years of current U.S. natural-gas demand. New technologies and a drilling boom have helped production rise 11 percent in the past two years, creating a glut that has driven prices down to a six-year low and prompted producers to temporarily cut back drilling and search for new demand. Oil, meanwhile, has become harder to find and more expensive to produce, and while coal remains plentiful in the U.S., it is likely to face new restrictions. A climate-change bill being pushed by President Barack Obama that is expected to come out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in May could increase reliance on natural gas as an alternative to coal. A bipartisan bill providing tax incentives for natural-gas cars looks likely to pass this year. However, major users of natural gas, such as utilities and chemicals companies, are concerned that the plan to replace gasoline with natural gas in vehicles would drive up prices. Environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, have argued that natural gas is better used to replace coal for power generation.
Salazar Announces $305 Million Economic Stimulus Investment
U.S. Department of the Interior (05/01/09)
The U.S. Department of the Interior has announced $305 million in funding for more than 650 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) projects across the United States under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The funding will be used to restore landscapes and habitat and spur renewable energy development on public lands. "Through these economic recovery investments, we are also making a down payment on restoring and protecting the stunning landscapes that BLM manages on behalf of the American people," says Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. "We will conserve habitat, restore watersheds, clean up abandoned mine sites and wells, and build a legacy of stewardship of which we can be proud."
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Nuclear Solution Comes With a Huge Price Tag
Associated Press (04/29/09)
The high cost of building nuclear reactors could plague efforts to build a wave of new reactors to solve at least part of the nation's energy problems as it attempts to shift away from fossil fuels. This month in Missouri the first of the next generation reactors was put on hold because of the $6 billion price tag, and the legal fight in several states shows how big the cost hurdle will be. While some states planning to build nuclear plants have altered laws so that consumers begin footing the bill now, before construction begins, Missouri did not. "A large plant would be difficult to finance under the best of conditions, but in today's credit constrained markets, without supportive state energy policies, we believe getting financial backing for these projects is impossible," says Thomas Voss, AmerenUE's president and chief executive. Residential electricity rates would have risen 1 percent to 3 percent annually for AmerenUE customers, up to 12.5 percent during construction, then actually dropped once the plant was in operation. Standard & Poor's has issued a report concluding that because much of the new technology and building techniques are untested in the U.S., construction will be lengthier, more expensive, and riskier. The Nuclear Energy Institute reports that including AmerenUE's proposal, 18 companies say they want to build at least 26 reactors that would cost $6 billion to $8 billion apiece. As many as eight new nuclear plants are supposed to come on line by 2016. Republican lawmakers in Washington want more government funding for nuclear power. Sen. Lamar Alexander R-LA), who sits on the appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, says the U.S. should build 100 more nuclear plants rather than spend "billions in subsidies" for renewable energy. He notes that nuclear plants provide 80 percent of France's electricity, and the country has one of the lowest electric rates and carbon emissions in Europe.
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U.S. Wind Energy Industry Grew in First Quarter
Reuters (04/28/09)
The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports that the wind energy industry installed 2,836 megawatts of new generating capacity from January to March of this year, double the amount of the same period in 2008. The total wind projects developed in the first quarter of 2009 have the capacity to power 816,000 homes and were completed in 15 states. "These brand new wind projects shine a ray of hope on our economy today, creating good jobs and powering homes with a clean, inexhaustible source of energy," says AWEA Chief Executive Officer Denise Bode. The states with the fastest growth in wind capacity during the first quarter were Indiana with 75 percent, Maine with 55 percent, Nebraska 53 percent, Idaho, 49 percent, and New York 34 percent. The total wind power generating capacity in the U.S. now totals 28,206 megawatts.
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Marine Energy: How Much Development Potential Is There?
Hydro Review (04/09) Vol. 28, No. 3, P. 32; Bedard, Roger J.; Previsic, Mirko; Polagye, Brian L.
In the April issue of Hydro Review, Roger Bedard, ocean energy leader with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Mirki Previsic, vice president of Re Vision Consulting LLC, and University of Washington research associate Brian Polagye examine the amount of extractable electrical capacity in the United States from wave and kinetic stream. In 2003, EPRI placed the available annual wave energy resources in the U.S. at approximately 2.1 million GWh, with 1.25 million GWh residing in the Pacific coastline of Alaska, 440,000 GWh in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, 330,000 GWh in Hawaii and Midway Islands, and 100,000 GWh in New England and mid-Atlantic states. A preliminary assessment of tidal stream extraction assumes a conservative extraction of 15 percent of the net available tidal kinetic resource, plant availability of 90 percent, and a "water-to-wire" efficiency of 90 percent. Based on these figures, yearly electricity produced at the sites studied by EPRI is roughly 14,000 GWh. A 2008 EPRI evaluation of six specific sites in Alaska determined the total annual energy at those sites was 78 GWh, and the average yearly power was 8.9 Mw.
Concrete Pulling Even With Asphalt in the Race to Pave Roads
Cleveland Plain Dealer (OH) (04/25/09) Farkas, Karen
Asphalt has been far and away the predominant choice for U.S. roadways for the past century, but as the rising cost of oil makes asphalt more expensive, concrete is looking more viable. As a result, the Ohio Department of Transportation took the rare step of asking both concrete contractors and asphalt companies to submit bids for a reconstruction and widening project along Ohio 2 in Lake County; ordinarily, the department seeks bids for only one surface material at a time because of the required engineering details and planning time. Bonnie Teeuwen, deputy director of the district including Lake County, says that the bids were competitive enough to come in around $10 million less than state engineers' predicted $95 million, and the $85.8 million contract was awarded to Anthony Allega Cement Contractor of Valley View and Great Lakes Construction of Hinckley. "It was surprising to us that the concrete bid was lower," says Lou Hazapis, a manager on the project. "We have not done a lot of full-depth concrete pavement, but right now it is very competitive." The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the cost of asphalt for paving rose about 17.4 percent from March 2008 to March 2009, compared to a 4.7 percent rise for concrete, although Cliff Ursich of the asphalt trade group Flexible Pavements of Ohio notes that asphalt's cost has fallen along with oil prices since last summer.
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How to Fix Transportation? More Taxes, More Tolls and More Flexibility, Says TxDOT's Holmes
Dallas Morning News (TX) (04/28/09) Lindenberger, Michael
Though he is known as an ardent supporter of private toll roads, Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes acknowledged before a U.S. Senate committee on April 28 that private toll roads and privatized bridges cannot solve the country's transportation financing problems by themselves. Texas Gov. Rick Perry chose Holmes to lead the national Transportation Transformation advocacy group, which pressures Congress for private toll roads, but for at least a year Holmes has been saying that more taxes will also be necessary to close the funding gaps. During the Senate committee hearing, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) asked Holmes for his opinion on a bill she filed that would allow states to decline to participate in the federal highway program and instead choose for themselves how to spend federal gas tax receipts. Holmes responded that the bill would provide states with much more flexibility to design and implement their transportation systems, although he also said that flexibility would be within the constraints of appropriate federal standards. He also backs the idea of higher gas taxes, although he sees the political chances of such a proposal as unlikely: "We need a gas tax increase, but I don't think we are going to get one in Texas, or nationally. I don't think President Obama is for it, and I don't think we are going to get it through the House in Texas." According to Holmes, "I think we need a lot of everything, Once we start restricting the funding sources, it becomes more and more difficult to find enough funds. Quite frankly we need to raise more gas tax money, because the transition away from motor fuels tax is going to be difficult at best, and will take a long time. We need funding from more sources."
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Vancouver Digs Deep to Reduce Earthquake Risks
Journal of Commerce (Canada) (04/27/2009) Gilbert, Richard
The Vancouver metro area in British Columbia, Canada, is planning to defend the region's water supply infrastructure from the threat of major earthquakes by building water tunnels under the Fraser River and Burrard Inlet. "Right now we are just at the stage of detailed design, which includes finishing contract documents, specifications and drawings," says Frank Huber, division manager of engineering support and technical services with Metro Vancouver. "We are within a month of completing this and are also trying to get a team together for the construction stage. We are just about there after four to five years of investigations and design." The plan is for the Port Mann tunnel to be 3.2 meters in diameter and a kilometer in length, containing a pipeline to move water from Coquitlam to North Surrey, serving as the primary water supply link to places south of the river. Huber says the tunnels are designed to stand up to a worst-case scenario—either an earthquake about eight or nine on the Richter scale about 200 or 300 miles from the Vancouver Island coast or a closer earthquake coming in at about seven on the Richter scale. A Tunnel Boring Machine will be used to install a lining through soft ground and sandy deposits, and the tunnel around the pipe will be filled with cementitious grout. "All three structural components will act in unison to give the strength and ductility needed to resist seismic forces or major earthquakes," says Huber.
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Extreme Designs
Medical Construction & Design (04/09) Vol. 5, No. 2, P. 54; Skaggs, Ronald L.; Sprague, Joseph G.; Mann, George J.
The exterior design and finish of a healthcare facility can matter a great deal in terms of energy savings, building function, patient and staff needs, and aesthetics, and it is important to understand how these variables change depending on local climate considerations. Exterior materials and methods should be chosen based on climate considerations as well as the availability of labor and materials, while exterior color is a key element that can greatly effect energy utilization and operating costs. Site orientation matters as well -- for example, a building in a northern area could be oriented for maximum daylight -- and the amount of window area on the exterior walls makes a difference in terms of lighting and energy use as well as in terms of patient and staff needs and benefits. Examples of local climate considerations affecting design include Florida's Homestead Hospital's design to withstand a Category 5 hurricane -- while still allowing natural light into the space with an atrium in the area of greatest structural support -- or the St. Rose Dominican Hospital Siena Campus's design to deal with the long and hot days in Henderson, Nev.'s desert climate. The Nevada hospital campus was outfitted with an External Insulation Finish System a well as a healing garden that is shaded by the building at the hottest part of the day. For these and similar projects, architects, contractors, and government officials should work together for research and development of hospital and health facility exteriors that are sustainable, energy efficient, economical, functional, and aesthetically pleasing.
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The Reroofing of Government
Federal Times (04/20/09)
Billions of dollars in stimulus funds are starting to flow to federal agencies for various building and energy projects, and some of those funds will be used to replace or retrofit hundreds of federal rooftops with more environmentally friendly alternatives. The General Services Administration (GSA), which owns and operates more than 1,500 federal buildings nationwide, plans to use a portion of the $4.5 billion it received for roof replacements. Observers say the combination of green building requirements and stimulus funds could translate into millions of square feet of federal rooftops being outfitted with either solar-powered systems or vegetative roofs. Michael Cyr, the Interior Department official in charge of installing his agency's green roof, states, "The federal government replaces building roofs every 15 years on average. If you take the total amount of federal roofing and just take one-fifteenth of that, it's millions of square feet." A green roof system can not only double or even triple the life of a roof, it can reduce the heat island effect that warms buildings during the summer months, save the federal government on energy and maintenance costs and better manage storm runoff. Cyr notes, "The green roof . . . not only absorbs the water, but it also prevents runoff. It filters it." GSA is considering a trio of options for replacing federal building roofs: solar roof panels, vegetative roofs or insulated roofs that repel heat. The agency's first preference is building integrated photovoltaic roof membranes, in which thin films of solar panels are laminated onto insulated roofs. The integrated membranes combine both a new roof and a solar system, which ensures that the solar component does not degrade the quality of the roof. Such systems have been installed on a small number of federal facilities to date. One of the biggest tops the National Archives and Records Administration storage facility in Massachusetts.
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'Employing' Independent Contractors Leads to Significant Liability
Building Solutions (04/01/09) P. 10; Massimino, Jonathan A.
Lawsuits regarding new hire misclassification, in which an independent contractor is intentionally or accidentally categorized as an employee without receiving full-time benefits, are on the rise. Some plaintiffs view these misclassifications as an opportunity to claim a number of workplace violations. To avoid serious liability, contractors must use the correct criteria to properly identify an independent contractor and treat him or her accordingly. According to human resources (HR) experts, one sure indicator that a contractor should be considered an employee is if they are unable to produce their own business card. According to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service's guidelines for contractor/employee classification, workers are tested using a 20-factor examine divided into three parts: behavioral control, financial control, and the parties' relationship to one another. Failing to consider these factors when hiring a worker can bring with it significant punitive damages in court. For example, in a class-action suit against the Orange County Register, employees argued that the paper mistakenly identified them as independent contractors when they were in fact employees. The newspaper was accused of failing to provide rest and meal breaks, meet minimum wage requirements, and reimburse business expenses, among other infractions. The case was finally settled in November 2008 after four years, and the plaintiffs were awarded a settlement of $42 million.
Universities Angle for Billions to Build Obama's New Broadband Network
Chronicle of Higher Education (04/24/09) Parry, Marc
Several higher-education information technology groups are working to influence the U.S. broadband strategy and help steer the distribution of $4.7 billion in Internet access stimulus funding. For example, Internet2, a high-speed networking consortium that has more than 200 universities among its members, has released "Unleashing Waves of Innovation: Transformative Broadband for America's Future," a white paper that was filed with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Internet2's Gary R. Bachula proposes that universities receive roughly $1 billion of the stimulus funding to improve their network infrastructure and form partnerships to bring broadband into surrounding communities. Bachula says the funding would help universities engage in new scientific experiments that require the massive international movement of data, distribute knowledge in new ways through distance education, and make medical care more available in rural areas through video. He says achieving this objective would lead to innovation that is good for the economy, with students and faculty members achieving innovation through a superpowered Internet. Much of the rest of the stimulus money would flow through the states, Bachula says. He says states could use university-led local networks to connect public facilities such as schools, hospitals, police stations, and community centers. Education and research networks have already established some of these connections, Bachula notes.
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Project Tests Safer Way To Install Markers
Innovator (U.S. FHWA) (03/01/09) No. 11,
North Carolina-based Stay Alert Safety Services is using a Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Technology Partnerships grant to test safer ways to install reflective pavement markers on roads, a job that usually requires workers to ride on seats installed under moving trucks just inches from traffic. The prototype exceeded safety and reliability expectations in a 2008 field test, so tests on road projects are anticipated this year. "We're very pleased with the results of the field test," said Stay Alert Project Manager Tony Collins. "We're really beyond what we anticipated at this point." The automated pavement-marker system, installed on a flatbed truck, applies adhesive and puts markers in place using a robotic arm, controlled remotely by a worker in the cab of the truck. According to FHWA Roadway Team leader Carl Andersen, who observed the field test along U.S. Route 158 in North Carolina, "The system performed as designed, and at times worked as rapidly as existing procedures." Anderson said that a marketable automated system would enable workers to avoid the exposure to traffic, road dirt, exhaust, and high temperatures from the road and the bituminous adhesive on the truck that they currently experience. "Even though Highway 158 is a curvy, two-lane road with higher-than-normal traffic, the automatic raised marker applicator did a great job of installing markers while providing safety to the workers and minimizing inconvenience to the motorist," said Timothy Inglis, senior government transportation safety specialist for safety-marker manufacturer 3M, who also observed the test.
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