Nick Merrick © Hedrich-Blessing
ON THE COVER: Photographed in New Orleans at the construction site of a closure gate for the 17th Street Canal, Thomas L. Jackson, P.E., D.WRE, F.ASCE, the president of the new Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority–East, is fulfilling the goal of ASCE’s Policy 416, which “encourages the selection and appointment of qualified professional engineers to government positions requiring professional engineering knowledge for operational or management decisions.” Portrait by Richard Sexton
Features
By Robert L. Reid
After the levees broke in 2005 and flooded more than 80 percent of New Orleans, Louisiana’s governor and legislature moved to replace the state’s fragmented, politicized system of local levee oversight with a regional approach that for the first time would make flood control experts responsible for maintaining the Crescent City’s hurricane protection system. Thomas L. Jackson, p.e., d.wre, f.asce, a former asce president, has taken charge of the larger of these two “super levee boards,” the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority–East.
Millions of people in developing nations and rural communities are being poisoned by high levels of arsenic in their drinking water. They suffer afflictions ranging from skin lesions to cancer, and in some cases premature death results. For these populations, the treatment solutions need to rely on local materials and supplies, and they must be simple to construct and easy to maintain. This special section focuses on two such solutions.
By Richard Fahey, P.E., BCEE
A method for filtering arsenic from water developed by the Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur, employs pelletized granules of activated alumina housed in 30 cm diameter canisters that can be attached to existing hand pumps.
By Jeremiah D. Jackson, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE
A home-tested method for removing arsenic naturally uses an easily created pond with artificial channels that enable the water to meander through a planting of indigenous aquatic macrophytes—namely, cattails. Local species of fish in the pond can control mosquitoes.
By Jerome Rasgus, S.E., M.ASCE, John Dennington, P.E., RA, Larry Memberg, P.E., A.M.ASCE, and Ann Rae Jonas
Inspired by Joe Rosenthal’s famous Associated Press photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima, the most dramatic portion of the new National Museum of the Marine Corps, in Quantico, Virginia, is a 230 ft (70 m) long mast that rises from the floor of the circular main gallery. Clad in stainless steel, the mast is a slender cantilever member supported by rib and ridge beams.
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