The News Review:
- Once drifts now waves
- China-financed power plant project launched in Ghana
- Nigeria: Pramod Mittal Again
- Give us a square foot and we’ll give you a year’s worth of…
- Greaves’ new Gummidipoondi facility on stream
- Honda Accord: Born to be mild
Once drifts now waves
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (subscription… – Apr 19, 2008
At the end of last month flows in separate sanitary sewers throughout communities served by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District swelled to between four and eight times the volumes expected on days without precipitation district engineers disclosed at a recent meeting with their suburban counterparts. On one day with no rain – March 26 – water from melting snow boosted flows so high that the South Shore sewage treatment plant – at the receiving end of the sanitary sewers – was pushed nearly to its capacity district Executive Director Kevin Shafer said. The district’s plant in Oak Creek is designed to treat similarly heavy flows of 250 million gallons or more a day in rainstorms but melting snow alone is not expected to give the plant so much water. Normal dry-day flow to either the South Shore or Jones Island treatment plant is between 60 million and 80 million gallons. As testament to the mass of snow that fell this winter the volume pouring in to South Shore exceeded 150 million gallons a day on 34 consecutive days from March 14 to April 16 – even though rainfall was recorded on just a handful of those days before last week’s storms. There were no sewer overflows resulting from melting snow in March. Combined sewers in central Milwaukee and Shorewood began overflowing to urban rivers and Lake Michigan on April 10 after the week’s second rainstorm… Only homes built before 1955 are allowed to have foundation drains connected to sanitary sewers. Bate and Shafer spoke Thursday at a meeting of the district’s Technical Advisory Team which includes municipal engineers from 28 communities in the district’s service area and state environmental regulators. Franklin City Engineer John Bennett asked whether such excess flows from snowmelt showed the need to build additional treatment capacity at the South Shore plant. The district’s 2020 facilities improvement plan recommends construction of 150 million gallons a day of capacity at the plant at an estimated cost of between $97 million and $152 million. This would be done only after suburban population growth requires such an investment Shafer said. The district will decide whether to build the additional capacity after the 2010 census. Municipalities in the metropolitan area will be expected to confront leaks in private sewers within their communities said Ted Bosch a wastewater engineer with the state Department of Natural Resources in Milwaukee.
China-financed power plant project launched in Ghana
chinadaily.com.cn – Apr 19, 2008
alibbstyle5 { FONT-SIZE: 12px; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial Helvetica sans-serif}A. alibb:link { COLOR: #000; TEXT-DECORATION: underline}A. alibb:visited { COLOR: #600; TEXT-DECORATION: underline}A… The gas-stream combined cycle power generation project with a total investment of 1 billion Chinese yuan ($143 million) is one of the first batch of projects financed by the CADFa special fund set up in June last year by the Chinese government to encourage Chinese enterprises to expand investment in Africa and promote the continent’s economic expansion. The project designed to have an installed capacity of 200 megawatts by the end of 2008 and 560 megawatts in total in the future is expected to substantially supplement power supply in the west African country where demand for electricity is projected to grow by 6 percent annually in the next 10 years. The engineering and procurement of machinery and equipment for the project have been completed according to a press release of the joint venture. Over the past two months the company has completed over 970 000 cubic meters of excavation and filling work and has almost completed the construction of an access road from Tema-Kpone road to the site. Civil work is about to start. As one of the biggest foreign investment projects in Ghana it is expected to offer numerous job opportunities to the locals. (For more biz stories please visit.
Nigeria: Pramod Mittal Again
AllAfrica.com – Apr 19, 2008
The employees have to wait for hours to get access to the lone computer to send e-mails to their families. When contacted over phone they were reluctant to talk fearing that they would be victimised by the management. From India the wife of one of the employees an electrical engineer trapped there told our source that the "company was irregular in paying the salary right from the beginning. We do not know who to approach and what to do. "In an e-mail intercepted and sent to a local Indian newspaper The Hindu the Indians said they were "awaiting clearance from the interim management at ASCL who are yet to take over so that we can move on from here. We have been promised that all the pending local allowances will be paid. Nothing has been told of the mode and date of payment… Most of them have returned home without their full entitlements. The situation in Ajaokuta is similar to that of Global Steel’s second one-million-tonne plant Delta Steel which it acquired in southern Nigeria and at the Kremikovtzi plant in Bulgaria which is running short of working capital. Incidentally in Bulgaria bidders for the Kremikovtzi plant include Pramod Mittal’s brother Lakshmi Mittal who has shown interest in taking management control of the mill in the East European nation. Now according to sources close to the family the elder Mittal is poised to do it again this time by exploiting his younger brother Pramod’s troubles to buy his steel plant in Bulgaria for up to €50m (£40m) less than it is believed to be worth. Pramod’s firm Global Steel Holdings bought Bulgaria’s Kremikovtzi Steel Company for €72m in 2005 and had hoped to sell it to a Russian company for €150m. Bulgarian investors had become increasingly alarmed by Pramod’s stewardship of the company and issued a default notice on a €320m bond which has forced him to sell the plant. According to friends Pramod had been reluctant to sell to his elder brother.
Give us a square foot and we’ll give you a year’s worth of…
Sacramento Bee – Apr 19, 2008
19 2008| Page 4K Simple ideas are often the best. And Mel Bartholomew stumbled upon a simple even slightly revolutionary idea a little more than 25 years ago when he coined the term “square foot gardening. “The retired engineer and dedicated gardener from Utah urged home gardeners to convert their traditional row gardens into raised beds filled with rich friable soil; to divide each bed into 1-square-foot grids; and then to plant something in every square foot. When you take one crop out add a handful of compost and plant something else. There’s no need to let the ground lay fallow if you follow this method he says. And in our mild Northern California climate you can glean produce from a small vegetable garden all year. While Bartholomew’s method was aimed at people with little space I thought his principles were sound even for folks with large gardens… And Mel Bartholomew stumbled upon a simple even slightly revolutionary idea a little more than 25 years ago when he coined the term “square foot gardening. “The retired engineer and dedicated gardener from Utah urged home gardeners to convert their traditional row gardens into raised beds filled with rich friable soil; to divide each bed into 1-square-foot grids; and then to plant something in every square foot. When you take one crop out add a handful of compost and plant something else. There’s no need to let the ground lay fallow if you follow this method he says. And in our mild Northern California climate you can glean produce from a small vegetable garden all year. While Bartholomew’s method was aimed at people with little space I thought his principles were sound even for folks with large gardens. After all why waste space energy and resources unnecessarily?Well I’d previously converted the vegetable garden to raised beds because they organize the garden so beautifully.
Greaves’ new Gummidipoondi facility on stream
Hindu – Apr 19, 2008
Varadharajan The unit will produce 1200 compactors annually Technical collaboration with Bomag of GermanyOpens centre to train engineers and operators CHENNAI: Greaves Cotton a leading engineering company has set up a new plant for manufacturing road compaction equipment in Gummidipoondi near Chennai. Inaugurating the plant Karan Thapar Chairman of the company said the facility the fourth manufacturing unit of the company’s infrastructure equipment group would complement the existing unit and enable it to double its production capacity to 1200 compaction machines annually. Thapar has also announced the signing of a technical collaboration agreement with Bomag of Germany to manufacture the latest generation 19-tonne vibratory soil compactors in India. There was a huge demand for high capacity compactors in India from contractors executing road projects airports dam and irrigation projects he said.
Honda Accord: Born to be mild
Telegraph.co.uk – Apr 19, 2008
8 million have been sold and this new model is the eighth generation in the US the seventh in Europe. Honda has been very clever with its engineering – Accord means different things to different markets but under the skin they all share lots of components so they aren’t designed two or three times. First planned as a sporty V6 saloon the Accord debuted as a small-engined three-door hatchback. Since then the badge has graced hatchbacks saloons and estates four- and six-cylinder petrol diesel and hybrid drivelines. At one time it was built in three body sizes for Japan Europe and North America where it was the country’s best-selling car for 20 consecutive years until 1997. There is still a separate and larger North American model which is also selling like gang busters in Russia where punters like a bigger class of motor… The body does roll but it is well controlled and progressive. Drive it like a hot hatchback and the Honda will try to understeer straight on when initially turning in. The heeling body then seems to plant the front wheels and adopt a set track round the corner whatever you do to the throttle. It means that when you first start driving the Accord quickly you’re always a yard or two wider of the corner apex than you intended but then you start to adjust and drive round the trait by guiding the nose slowly around at first. It means the Honda doesn’t have the immediacy and front-end domination of cars like the Ford Mondeo but I’m not sure that owners will mind too much. The steering is light and direct and with adjustable wheel and seat there is an excellent driving position to be had for most sizes and shapes. Of slightly more concern are the brakes which after a few photographic cornering runs were smoking like a wet bonfire.