News Release
| Release Number: | 01-152 |
| Dated: | 11/8/2001 |
| Contact: | Heidi Y. Helwig, 503-808-4510 |
Portland, Ore.-The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is prepared to commit extra resources needed to balance competing needs as it manages its ocean dredged material disposal (ODMD) sites at the Mouth of the Columbia River (MCR).
This decision was reached after an independent federal review team examined Corps and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) management processes for the ODMD sites, paired with the Corps' own reevaluation of its internal management processes. The team forwarded its findings and recommendations in a report.
The Corps will immediately adopt some of the team's recommended changes, while it continues to evaluate and consider additional recommendations and assess the resources required to implement them. The initial changes include:
- * The Corps will work with the EPA to update the management and monitoring plan for the MCR ocean disposal sites. There will be an opportunity for public comment.
- * The Corps will increase the frequency of bathymetric surveys at MCR sites during the dredging season to obtain real-time information to manage the sites. The acquisition of an additional survey boat will allow the Corps to meet increased survey needs for the MCR while still meeting surveying needs at other project sites.
- * The Corps will reevaluate its own staffing requirements to ensure key tasks, as well as internal and external coordination efforts, are accomplished quickly.
The Corps and EPA must manage ODMD sites to balance competing objectives, such as efficient dredging to maintain a safe navigation channel, minimizing potential wave impacts, and retaining sand in the near-shore littoral system to slow coastal erosion.
Site E, near the mouth of the Columbia River, is important to effectively maintaining the MCR navigation channel and is an environmentally valuable option because it keeps sand in the near shore-system. Since the area also is a historically used site where sand is constantly shifting due to high wave and current energy, impacts on aquatic organisms are minimized. To further minimize potential impacts, the Corps stops using the western portion of the site after Aug. 15 each year when soft-shell crabs may begin moving into the area.
The Corps convened a review team in September to evaluate ODMD site management practices used by the Corps and EPA at the MCR, particularly Site E, and to provide recommendations. The four-member team included two ocean dredged material disposal experts from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): one from EPA Region 3, Philadelphia, and the second from EPA Region 9, San Francisco. The other two members were from Corps offices outside the Northwest. One, from Massachusetts, is a National expert in ODMD site management and monitoring. The second, from the Engineering Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss., is a research scientist knowledgeable in ocean wave modeling and prediction. Modeling is one tool used by the Corps to manage ocean dredged material disposal sites.