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August 3 2011 Vol. XLIX • No. 16
“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded 1957.” 470 Maryland Drive • Ft. Washington, PA 19034 • 215/885-2900 • Toll Free 800-523-2200 • Fax 215/885-2910 • www.ConstructionEquipmentGuide.com
Inside
Shale Drilling Creates Natural Gas Supply Boom By Giles Lambertson CEG CORRESPONDENT Iberdrola Renewables photo
Bobcat of Connecticut Celebrates 20 Years…22
Indust ry Icon Passes Away at Age 96…28
The Hardscrabble Wind Farm is one of the first in the country to feature 100 meter high wind turbine towers.
New York Wind Farm Provides Power Upstate By Mary Reed CEG CORRESPONDENT
Ale x Lyon & Son Hol ds Annua l Picn ic…124
Table of Contents ............4 Paving Section ........53-65 Backhoes & Attachments Section ......................69-81 Parts Section ..............109 Auction Section ..115-132 Business Calendar ......116 Advertisers Index ........130
The New York town of Marcellus was named for a Roman general, not for the town’s outcropping of natural gas-bearing shale. These days, excited general contractors or construction equipment dealers don’t give a hang about the general. He never sparked a construction boom. The shale did. Running southwest from Marcellus, the thick layer of Devonian black shale takes the Marcellus name and dives deep under Pennsylvania and adjacent states. Oil companies using 21st-century technology have begun to plumb and tap the organicrich rock. The reward for drilling success is computed in the tens of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.
Wind energy has been harvested for centuries for such purposes as filling the sails of ships, raising water on farmlands and grinding grain. There are even instructions left by a first century mathematician on how to construct an organ run by wind power, and many of the Old Master paintings feature windmills in their backgrounds. Nowadays wind energy has even more to recommend it, given wind farms provide construction, Shown here is a well site in its early stages. see DRILLING page 36 manufacturing and operating jobs as well as increased revenues in the form of land lease payments and property taxes. It also is “green”, operating without the damage to the environment that can be caused by alternative sources such as Federal financial instruments and initiatives like Ruane said private investors would likely not gas and oil drilling or coal-mining. And a proposed national “Infrastructure Bank” seek to be partners in the vast majority of transbest of all, wind-produced energy is designed to attract private investment into trans- portation improvement projects needed in the freely available and will never run out. portation infrastructure projects should be included states. Market experience, he said, shows publicAccording to the American Wind in the new highway/transit bill, Pete Ruane, presi- private partnerships (P3s) generally serve a small, Energy Association (AWEA) New dent of the American Road & Transportation yet very important, niche — very expensive projYork state occupies the eighth place Builders Association (ARTBA), told the Senate ects that add highway capacity in congested urban nation-wide for wind capacity — Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee areas and can be tolled to provide a return on primeaning facilities built and power genJuly 20. He cautioned lawmakers, however, not to vate investment. erated — and it is in this state that one Addressing the nearly two-year delayed surface think that such initiatives alone could solve the of the newest wind farms is now transportation funding problem caused by the con- transportation bill, Ruane said the biggest obstacle operational. strained revenue stream into the Highway Trust see BANK page 103 see WIND page 88 Fund.
ARTBA Backs ‘Infrastructure Bank’