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by Tina Grady Barbaccia, Senior Editor

Volvo, Cat to raise
equipment prices 5 percent

Equipment manufacturers Volvo Construction
Equipment and Caterpillar plans to raise the price of their machines and
components up to 5 percent globally, citing record global demand for
commodities that has led to sharp increases in the cost base for heavy
equipment manufacturers.

Volvo hasn’t cited an exact date for the price
increase. Cat is planning the majority of its price adjustment to become
effective as of July, adding that mid-year pricing action is “unusual
but sometimes necessary.” Cat says that “additional pricing action may
occur later in 2008,” and notes that it hasn’t taken this type of
pricing action mid-year since 2005.

Restricted supply and burgeoning demand for steel,
especially in China, has led to the cost of iron ore rising by more than
70 percent on the worldwide markets, according to Volvo. This has
ultimately resulted in a sharp increase in the price of steel, and
consequently, in the production costs of manufacturers of construction
equipment, Volvo notes. To offset some of the impact of these rises, the
manufacturer says it needs to raise prices.

“Manufacturers of heavy construction equipment are
being particularly hard hit by the current record prices of commodities,
such as steel, oil, iron ore, and rubber,” said Scott Hall, executive
vice president of Volvo Construction Equipment, in a written statement
from Volvo.

“With no sign of commodity prices cooling in the
foreseeable future, it has become unavoidable that these costs be offset
in the form of a price increase.”

EPA, Corps establish new rule for wetlands
mitigation

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency announced a new wetlands compensatory
mitigation rule (www.epa.gov/wetlandsmitigation) on March 31 that
consolidates existing regulations and guidance to establish equivalent
standards for all types of mitigation under the Clean Water Act Section
404 regulatory program, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA)
reports in its eDigest & Washington Watch e-newsletter. The final rule
was published in the Federal Register on April 10 and goes into effect
60 days later.

The new rule provides a single set of regulations
for compensatory mitigation instead of the several separate guidance
documents that have been used. The rule establishes equivalent sets of
standards based on better science, increased public participation, and
innovative market-based tools, according to NSSGA. For a downloadable
PDF of the final rule, go to
www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/wetlands_mitigation
_final_rule_4_10_08.pdf.

The aggregates industry organization says the most
significant change required is that projects provided by all three
compensation mechanisms (i.e., permittee-responsible mitigation,
mitigation banks, and in-lieu fee mitigation) must have mitigation plans
which include the same 12 fundamental components: objectives, site
selection criteria, site protection instruments, baseline information,
credit determination methodology, a mitigation work plan, a maintenance
plan, ecological performance standards, monitoring requirements, a
long-term management plan, an adaptive management plan, and financial
assurances.

The rule also establishes a preferred hierarchy for
mitigation options, with mitigation bank credits as the preferred
method, followed by in-lieu fee program credits and permittee-responsible
mitigation. Permittee-responsible mitigation also has three further
possible circumstances — watershed approach, onsite and in-kind, and
off-site/out-of-kind.

Oklahoma team takes top honors in Construction
Challenge