Army Corps of Engineers on the Frontline of Domestic Contingency Operations

By J.R. Wilson - May 17, 2013

Seen here on Nov. 1, 2012, USACE New York District drift collection vessels work to clear tons of drift and debris from the New York-New Jersey Harbor after Hurricane Sandy, which made landfall just south of Atlantic City, N.J., on Oct. 29. The district’s Caven Point Marine Terminal suffered extensive damage during the hurricane, but despite the destruction of the main facility, district personnel continued to support missions to ensure safe navigation of the harbor. USACE domestic contingency operations support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) before, during, and after natural disasters, as well as in the event of man-made disasters, at the request of FEMA. USACE photo by Chris Gardner, New York District public affairs

According to USACE’s assessment of its response to Isaac, the $14.6 billion Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS), begun after Katrina, “worked as intended and significantly reduced flood risk in New Orleans. As part of the HSDRRS, USACE has strengthened and improved nearly 133 miles of levees, floodwalls, gated structures, and pump stations, forming the new Greater New Orleans perimeter system.”

“When Katrina hit, there were two authorized hurricane projects – Lake Pontchartrain and the West Bank – neither of which were complete. Those were examples of the slow funding typical of such projects,” Durham-Aguilera said.

“HSDRRS was unique in being funded up front, without a cost-benefit ratio and for a specific purpose – to complete and improve what already was being done, but also bringing in unique features. There is nothing else like it in the U.S., although there are similar systems in the Netherlands, U.K., and Russia.”

As a result of Isaac’s storm surge, an 18-mile stretch of 8-foot non-federal levees in Plaquemines Parish were overtopped. USACE helped drain the floodwaters and is performing additional modeling and post-storm evaluations to help better understand potential effects of future storm surges.

As of early September 2012, USACE had received more than 40 Isaac-related FEMA mission assignments totaling more than $20 million and involving some 400 USACE employees. That included deployment of USACE emergency power teams to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana; commodities, debris, and temporary roofing teams to Louisiana; bottled water to Alabama and Louisiana; emergency command and control vehicles to assist with on-site communications in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana; and coastal engineers to Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

“This was truly an ‘all hazard’ contingency response that reached across an extensive geographic area. Our teams were trained, prepared, and ready,” Durham-Aguilera said. “Along with FEMA and the interagencies, we anticipate the needs of the states’ emergency managers and communities to ensure we have the right plan, the right people, and the right supplies to best serve the public. People count on us; our folks from districts, divisions, the 249th [Engineer Battalion (Prime Power)], our headquarters, and others contributed mightily and met the myriad challenges wrought by Isaac.”

At any time, with what USACE does in terms of formal public works, engineering, and water resources, it is preparing, responding, recovering, or determining what can be done with local communities to mitigate the damage future events may bring. That ranges from training USACE temporary power, housing, and engineering teams to storm response exercises with the U.S. Coast Guard and other federal and state agencies.

“We put in temporary levees and barriers for the flood fight, deliver pumps and sand bags to communities that need them, map areas that may be flooded by future storms. And if the Stafford Act is triggered, we have numerous missions worked out with FEMA,” she said. “We can tap agencies such as EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to deal with wastewater or debris, with HUD [U.S. Housing and Urban Development] on shelter; we also help stand up interagency recovery task forces to help states leverage federal and other programs and determine what else we might do.

“Anybody can call on us directly for help or technical assistance; what we can do comes down to legal authority and funding. We have funded planning assistance for states; we also can direct them to existing programs in other agencies. We don’t have to be the lead, but spend a lot of time on collaboration. We also work with state storm or dam safety officials to identify problems they see. So we may not always have to have an ongoing project for someone to call on us for help, but the better state and local agencies are equipped, the better they can help their communities during a disaster.”

Specially trained and certified subject-matter experts lead – and staff – USACE field teams and advise local, state, and federal officials on national contingency operations. They go through specific formal USACE coursework, a federal readiness support center in Mobile, Ala., and associated training by other parts of the Department of Defense, DHS, and state agencies. That includes team training, hydraulic modeling, and evacuation models for state and local managers. And a lot of the technical expertise covered is developed by USACE’s eight research laboratories.

The big domestic disasters – natural and man-made – since the turn of the century have led to numerous significant changes for USACE’s approach to contingency operations.

“We were fortunate to be able to have a huge construction program, funded up front, and creation of a huge team from multiple agencies, to go in and do HSDRRS, for example. To do new design criteria and modeling in just a few years is probably the most significant challenge we have had; it is amazing to do billions of dollars in construction programs in only a few years,” Durham-Aguilera concluded.

“I’ve been in the Corps a long time and all over the world, but I have never seen a better interagency cooperation effort than is now in place. We are in a totally different universe than [before] Katrina.”

This article originally appeared in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Building Strong®, Serving the Nation and the Armed Forces 2012-2013 Edition.