The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages one of the largest federal environmental missions:
Restoring environmentally damaged lands
Constructing sustainable facilities
Regulating waterways and managing natural resources
Cleaning up contaminated sites from past military activities.
Restoring environmentally damaged lands:
The Corps works to bring damaged environments back to life:
Through large-scale ecosystem restoration projects, such as the Everglades, the Louisiana Coastal Area and the Missouri River
By employing system-wide watershed approaches to problem solving and management for smaller ecosystem restoration projects
On the horizon is a new National Center for Ecosystem Restoration, ensuring that ecosystem restoration projects are coordinated, synchronized and taking a holistic life-cycle approach.
Constructing sustainable facilities:
The Corps is designing and building sustainable communities and facilities by:
Including sustainable design criteria into military construction and training lands projects
Developing techniques to divert military construction waste from landfills through recycling and reuse
Minimizing the use of hazardous materials
Establishing the Center for the Advancement of Sustainability Innovations for sustainable planning and design expertise.
Regulating waterways and managing natural resources
The Corps regulates work in the nation’s wetlands and waters, with a goal of protecting the aquatic environment while allowing responsible development.
With nearly 12 million acres of land and water to manage, the Corps is:
Responsible for the well-being of 66 endangered species
Using Environmental Management Systems to achieve waste reduction, recycling and energy efficiency goals
Cleanup and protection activities
The environmental program manages, designs and executes cleanup and protection activities, such as:
Cleaning up sites contaminated with hazardous, toxic or radioactive waste or ordnance through the Formerly Used Defense Sites program
Cleaning up low-level radioactive waste from the nation’s early atomic weapons program through the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program
Supporting EPA by cleaning up Superfund sites and working with its Brownfields and Portfields programs
Supporting the Army with the Base Realignment and Closure program
Ensuring that facilities comply with federal, state and local environmental laws
Conserving cultural and natural resources
Bottom line
The Corps’ goal for the environmental mission is to use as few resources as are needed to accomplish the mission, in a manner that leaves the smallest footprint behind.