PCiRoads uses custom equipment for Minneapolis stormwater project
Minneapolis features a busy and lively downtown area that’s home to nearly 57,000 residents along with 216,000 employees each week, per mplsdowntown.com. The city has consistently topped more than $1 billion in new construction permits over the past 11 years … More from our cover sponsor →
Reinventing Racine Rust belt community comes back
Located along the shore of Lake Michigan between Milwaukee and Chicago, Racine, Wis., is a Rust Belt community of 78,000 built on the backs of a diverse immigrant population that moved into the area during the late 19th and early … Continue reading →
Boosting biogas, profitably
Converting wasted food to energy can be an effective approach to keeping user rates low and forging or continuing on a path to sustainability. Sharon Thieszen, superintendent of the Sheboygan, Wis., Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility, believes in the merits of … Continue reading →
Organizations join to write the book on municipal recycling contracts
Two of the leading organizations in solid waste and recycling joined forces last year to compile comprehensive guidelines that they believe are mutually beneficial for municipalities, waste management companies and material recovery facilities. The result of the collaboration between the … Continue reading →
Prescribed burns — Does your area need them?
Playing with fire — legally — is sometimes necessary and even beneficial. That fact has some communities contemplating prescribed burning in their areas. In addition to interacting with other municipalities and state forestry departments for up-to-date information, communities may first … Continue reading →
Do you need a high-dump sweeper?
For many years, almost every model of mechanical sweeper had the capability to lift the debris hopper high enough to off-load the collected debris into a truck or roll-off container. For regenerative air sweepers, the product offerings were significantly less … Continue reading →
A Crisis Averted
In early August, President Obama signed a bill crafted by the House and Senate that will keep the Highway Trust Fund from running out of what relatively little money it has until October. It was another Hail Mary pass by … Continue reading →
News & Notes August 2015
APWA commends introduction of six-year transportation reauthorization DRIVE Act Washington, D.C. — Th e American Public Works Association commended the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Ranking Member Barbara Boxer (D-CA), … Continue reading →
Aladtec workforce management solutions for public safety
Aladtec, located in Hudson, Wis., provides an Internet-based employee scheduling and workforce management system created specifically for the public safety sector: EMS, fire/rescue, police, dispatch and public works. It’s a great tool for individual agencies or municipality-wide. It all started … Continue reading →
Albany, Georgia
Settled: 1836 Pop: 77,434 Government type: Mayor, city manager and board of commissioners www.albany.ga.us There might not have been a more welcome sight in the city of Albany, Ga., in 1881 than the miracle Col. John Porter Fort produced. With … Continue reading →
NRPA hits the big 5-0 in Vegas
If there’s one place made to whoop it up and celebrate a half-century milestone, that place would be Las Vegas. That’s why it’s fitting that the National Recreation and Parks Association’s annual conference will take place at Mandalay Bay Sept. … Continue reading →
Phoenix to host public works professionals
The biggest annual gathering of municipal water treatment, street department, sanitary sewer, stormwater and engineering professionals — American Public Works Association’s International Public Works Congress and Exposition — gets underway at the end of this month in Phoenix, Ariz. “The … Continue reading →
Eighteenth annual Snow and Ice Symposium
Snow and Ice Management Association brought private sector snow professionals together June 21–24 in Schaumburg, Ill., to compare strategies for picking up where municipalities’ responsibility ends. The SIMA Snow and Ice Symposium featured industry and thought leaders like Sasha Strauss, … Continue reading →
World Chicken Festival 2015 festival dates: Sept. 24-27
For the past quarter-century during the last full weekend of September, the small town of London, Ky., in Laurel County, has commemorated two of its favorite sons with a “finger lickin’ good” downtown festival that draws upwards of a whopping … Continue reading →
Mothman Festival Sept. 19 and 20
“He” was first sighted on Nov. 12, 1966, by five gravediggers; then three days later by two young couples, and over the next 13 months by more than 100 people in the Point Pleasant, W. Va., area. He has been … Continue reading →
CNG and fleets: building your business case
Fleets considering a compressed natural gas program now have two online resources to help evaluate economic soundness. Natural gas has come to the forefront of the country’s energy news recently as a clean-burning, abundant and domestically produced energy source. In … Continue reading →
Transformational thinking: ‘Project Kill the Flashover’
Controlling extreme fire behavior is part of the mission of the fire service. Preventing flashover — that moment when the combustible material in an enclosed area reaches its maximum ability to absorb heat energy and ignites nearly all at once … Continue reading →
Wildlife underpasses: projects in partnership
What makes partnerships work, when they are for improvements in a local area but require the help of different levels of government and different organizations to pull them off ? This question arose in an article that Jeff Mast, of … Continue reading →
Light strategies
Cities around the globe have been seeing the light ever so clearly the last few years not only in terms of residential illumination, but also as a way of creatively and proudly highlighting buildings, bridges, monuments and landmarks. Lower cost … Continue reading →
