• Hurricane Irene polluted Catskills watershed

    The water quality of lakes and coastal systems will be altered if  hurricanes intensify in a warming world, according to a Yale study; researchers found that last summer during Hurricane Irene — the worst storm in the New York area in 200 years — record amounts of dissolved organic matter darkened Catskill waters and affected the Ashokan Reservoir that supplies New York City with drinking water

  • Debate over causes of levee failure during Katrina intensifies

    A court case in which residents of two sections of New Orleans are suing a construction group has put millions of dollars at stake; residents of the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish residents claim that Washington Group International (WGI), an Amy Corps of Engineers contractor, removed several buildings and pilings from land along the Industrial Canal as part of a construction plan to expand the canal’s shipping lock, then failed adequately to plug the holes left behind; the holes allowed rainwater from Hurricane Katrina to seep underneath the 14-foot wall, essentially lifting the wall and allowing the areas to be flooded

  • Keystone XL pipeline: reliability of remote oil-spill sensors questioned

    The oil industry plans to build thousands of miles of pipelines in the next five years, making leak detection a growing issue; many of the new pipelines will cross aquifers and rivers which are used for drinking water and irrigation; the Keystone XL pipeline has already experienced its share of controversies, and now there is a debate over the quality and reliability of the pipeline’s sensor system for remote detection of oil spills

  • Repair bill for Miami-Dade water and sewage system: $12 billion

    Repairing, replacing, and rebuilding 13,000 miles of old water and sewage pipes and the treatment plants they connect to could cost Miami-Dade County, Florida more than $12 billion dollars over the next fifteen years; this is a staggering amount – made even more so in light of the fact that this is considerably more than the original estimate of $1 billion

  • Georgia’s Plant Vogtle reviving hopes for nuclear power in U.S.

    Plant Vogtle, located in Burke County, Georgia, is one of the most watched construction projects in the world; it is currently going through a $14 billion dollar expansion, which includes the first new commercial reactors built in the United States in decades

  • DOE promotes small-nuclear reactors (SMRs)

    South Carolina’s Savannah River Site (SRS) located in Aiken, along with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), have announced three partnerships to develop three small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) at the SRS facility; SMRs produce less energy than a regular reactor, but they produce enough energy to power small cities and remote areas

  • Desalination losing ground as a solution to California’s chronic water shortage

    According to the July 2011 census, more than thirty-seven million people live in California, increasing the pressure on the state’s water sources; desalinating sea water as a solution to the scarcity of fresh water is not a new technology — it has been around for more than four decades — but it has more recently been considered as a way to address California’s chronic, and growing, water shortage; a closer examination of the technology and its cost has cooled the initial enthusiasm for it

  • Dutch test-levee experiment helps strengthen U.S. levees, dams

    In the United States, the national flood-control infrastructure is aging and its structural health is deteriorating; the system comprises more than 5,600 km of levees, and 43 percent of the U.S. population lives in counties with levees designed to provide some level of protection from flooding; some of these levees are as old as 150 years; in 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers Report Card for America’s Infrastructure gave the condition of the nation’s dams a grade of D, and levees a grade of D-minus; an dam-strength experiment in the Netherland helps engineers collect data to validate new suite of technologies for assessing the health of levees and dams

  • New FERC office to focus on cyber security

    The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has created a new FERC office — Office of Energy Infrastructure Security (OEIS) —  which will help the Commission focus on potential cyber and physical security risks to energy facilities under its jurisdiction

  • Rare Earth metals: Will we have enough?

    Life in the twenty-first century would not be the same without rare Earth metals; cell phones, iPads, laptops, televisions, hybrid cars, wind turbines, solar cells, and many more products depend on rare Earth metals to function; will there be enough for us to continue our high-tech lifestyle and transition to a renewable energy economy? Do we need to turn to deep seabed or asteroid mining to meet future demand?

  • Specialty metals recycling policy needed: experts

    An international policy is needed for recycling scarce specialty metals that are critical in the production of consumer goods; because they are used in small amounts for very precise technological purposes, such as red phosphors, high-strength magnets, thin-film solar cells, and computer chips, recovery can be so technologically and economically challenging that the attempt is seldom made

  • Exploring solutions to growing water shortages

    Most Americans do not pay much attention to how much water they use when they take a shower or when they water the grass, but Michael Sullivan, a global executive at IBM thinks this will change; “Water is a finite resource,” Sullivan told a panel in a conference on water policy; “What we’re dealing with is that there’s a finite supply, and as the population grows and industry grows, we’re stressing that finite supply”

  • New York unprepared for flooding, sea level rise

    New York City may be a fast paced city of bright lights, sleek attitudes, fashion trends, and some of the best sports teams in the country, but underneath the glitz and glamour is a city which is not prepared for an act of God and which is being threatened by rising sea levels and severe storm flooding; “It’s a million small changes that need to happen,” one expert says

  • Seventy-four nuclear reactors in tsunami-risk areas

    Researchers have, for the first time, identified those nuclear power plants which are more vulnerable to suffering the effects of a tsunami; in total, twenty-three plants, in which there are seventy-four active nuclear reactors, are located in dangerous areas in east and southeast of Asia

  • Seventy-four nuclear reactors in tsunami-risk areas

    Researchers have, for the first time, identified those nuclear power plants which are more vulnerable to suffering the effects of a tsunami; in total, twenty-three plants, in which there are seventy-four active nuclear reactors, are located in dangerous areas in east and southeast of Asia