Wastewater under Home Plate
A short, highly sloped piping system and peak flows at the start and end of the day were causing the wastewater treatment plant in Daly City, Calif., to frequently exceed its permit for...
U.S. Sludge Digesters: From Pancakes to Eggs
Egg-shaped anaerobic sludge digesters, used extensively in Germany and Japan, cost more to build, but provide better mixing of sludge, require less maintenance and less energy to operate,...
Boston's City within a City
The Massachusetts Water Resource Authority's 11-year effort to clean up Boston Harbor is in full swing. The nerve center of the project is Deer Island, a 210 acre site that...
RCC at 10
Tens years after the first roller-compacted concrete (RCC) dam in the U.S.�the 169 ft high Willow Creek Dam in Oregon�was completed, the method has gained wide acceptance around the world...
Waterfall Aeration Works
When they sought an alternative for instream aeration in Chicago's Calumet Waterway System, engineers at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC)...
Small Utility GIS
Geographic information systems are revolutionizing much of the civil engineering field, providing engineers and managers with a new tool to relate databases and maps. But despite the benefits...
Instrumenting the `Y'
Segmental bridges are still relatively new to the U.S. and questions persist about their design and behavior. To expand the knowledge base, a number of laboratory and field studies have...
Perils of Point Loma
Rupture of the Point Loma sewage outfall in San Diego on Feb. 2, 1992, sent 180 mgd of primary-treated sewage coursing into shallow waters off the city's coastline. The article...
Managing for Profit
Clients hire firms today for their ability to manage, not just design and draw. Project managers must address owner requirements for cost, quality and schedule. The three are inseparable....
Tunnel Takes Cathodic Protection
Cathodic protection is nothing new for bridges and parking garages, but it has never been installed in a tunnel�until now. As part of a $15 million rehabilitation project, the method is...
Tying Back a Landslide
A slope covered with landslide debris is never the most desirable site on which to build, but sometimes it is the only one available. For the Forks of Butte hydroelectric power project,...
The Caisson Solution
Detroit is expanding its wastewater treatment plant to drastically reduce combined sewer overflows. The expansion, however, is being done on an extremely congested 4 acre tract of land...
Manholes and Microtunneling
Contractors are for the Oakwood Beach Interceptor Sewer Project, on Staten Island, N.Y., were having difficulty. Glacial tills and a high water table made working 90 ft below the ground...
In Too Deep
Urban excavation is fraught with risks and potential liability for engineers and contractors. Environmental issues (such as Superfund regulations and environmental impact statements),...
Settling Down Easy
In order to more fully participate in the international and Asian Pacific aviation network, it was decided to establish a highly efficient 24-hour a day operation at the New Kansai International...
Pressure Pipeline Design for Water and Wastewater
This committee report,
Rethinking the Competitive Bid
Concern that the U.S. construction industry is losing its competitive edge is nothing new. Ironically, the problem is not so much rooted in foreign technical expertise as it is in our...
Decentralized Wastewater Management
With the discovery earlier this century that city squalor caused disease, we protected ourselves by piping raw wastes away. Later, when the discharge had transformed rivers into foul,...
Dome Over Orlando
The article describes Orlando's new City Hall, a 267,000 sq ft nine-story reinforced concrete tower, clad in granite-aggregate precast concrete panels and topped by a 120...
School Is In Session
Cost overruns, project delays and the city bureaucracy have given school construction a bad reputation throughout the U.S., particularly in urban centers. But as other construction markets...
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