Infrastructure on Media Forum

Texas A&M Is Spending $11.8 Million on a Water Tower Before Its Semiconductor Institute Can Open

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents approved $11.755 million on Thursday for a one-million-gallon water tower at the RELLIS Campus in Bryan-College Station. It replaces a 300,000-gallon tank that was built to serve the military airfield the campus sits on.

That is the entire announcement. It is also the most revealing thing the A&M System has said about its semiconductor program all year.

The old tower holds water pressure somewhere around 51 to 55 psi. New buildings on the campus already have to install their own pumps to hit the pressure that fire protection and irrigation systems need. When every new structure has to solve the same utility problem privately, the shared system underneath it was sized for a different era, and in this case it literally was. The campus utility spine was laid for propeller aircraft and hangars.

Indiana Enters a Second Week Without Power While the Wildfire Story Moves On

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tens of thousands of people in Indiana began a second week without electricity after a deadly storm brought down trees and power lines. In Gary, a community center has been handing out boxed lunches. Meanwhile thousands evacuated in Reno as a fast-moving fire reached thirteen thousand acres and threatened hundreds of homes, one of more than two hundred new fires that started nationwide over a single weekend.

The two stories are receiving very different amounts of attention, and the reason has almost nothing to do with how many people are affected.

Venice's Temporary Bridges: Which Ones Float, Which Ones Stand on Piles

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Shoot the Grand Canal at night and you eventually catch something that shouldn’t be there. A steel and timber walkway running out over the water on driven piles, X-braced trestles, a truss railing, one sodium lamp doing all the work, a couple standing halfway across looking at nothing in particular. Behind it a Gothic palazzo with its window tracery lit, and further back a lit loggia throwing orange across the black water.