For example, he characterized the environmentally acceptable lubricant grease – for use on power stations and support equipment – now being explored as breaking down faster in the environment and as less toxic than normal greases. He added that the identification of the new grease involved close cooperation with both the Engineering Research and Development Center and Hydroelectric Design Center.
“The red knots start out their annual migration from the tip of South America and they fly nonstop from there to the shore of Delaware Bay in New Jersey and some other spots around the area. They don’t stop until they get here. And they lose about half their weight flying nonstop. But they time their arrival at the exact moment that these horseshoe crabs are coming up onto the shore to lay their eggs in the sand on the shore. Then they just gorge themselves for about two weeks, get their weight back, and then fly up to the Arctic. They basically can fly almost pole to pole. If they don’t put all their weight back on in this limited amount of time, they can’t make it up to the Arctic to do their breeding and keep the population going.”
“We’re doing a lot of research,” Duncan said. “We’ve got [a] procedure where we’re installing it on several units and measuring them very closely. Based on our research, we think this alternate grease is going to work, but we’re testing it on a small set of hydropower units initially to verify that before we implement it throughout the powerhouses.”
In addition to the powerhouses, the new grease will be used throughout USACE projects, on things like cranes and crane blocks, wheels, wire rope, and fishway weirs.
Ken Duncan, USACE Portland District Environmental Compliance Energy and Sustainability program manager, monitors the district’s hydropower operations for unwanted oil leaks. “The district uses environmentally friendly hydraulic fluids in their hydropower plants,” he said. “Nevertheless, our goal is zero fluids reaching the Columbia River.” USACE photo by Michelle Helms
Although the district had implemented an Oil Accountability Program in 2010 to closely measure all of the oil and lubricants used at USACE projects, the 2014 settlement also required some “tweaking” of that program.
Duncan said that some of the challenges in implementing the settlement are because many of the facilities are based on technology from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, but “just establishing very, very tight, regularly recurring procedures to measure the oil in the system has been a real step in the right direction.”
Across the country, Jim Boyer, a senior staff biologist in Philadelphia District’s Regulatory Branch, is involved with Endangered Species Act consultation for activities across Delaware Bay in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. He has been involved “on the regulatory side” since he joined USACE in 1989.
Explaining that USACE has its own environmental staff to ensure compliance with all environmental laws, Boyer said, “We deal with outside, non-Corps projects, applications from private individuals, from municipalities, from states, and from other organizations.”
In the recovery efforts following Hurricane Sandy, Boyer pointed to several “efforts to restore the back bay areas of New Jersey, primarily through dredging because of the over wash over the barrier islands that the storm had dumped – not only sand and sediments but debris as well.”
In addition to Sandy recovery-related efforts, he pointed to other general environmental restoration projects and environmental enhancement projects. One noteworthy effort involves Delaware Bay’s horseshoe crabs and their relationship to the threatened rufa subspecies of the bird commonly known as the red knot.
“The red knots start out their annual migration from the tip of South America and they fly nonstop from there to the shore of Delaware Bay in New Jersey and some other spots around the area,” Boyer said. “They don’t stop until they get here. And they lose about half their weight flying nonstop. But they time their arrival at the exact moment that these horseshoe crabs are coming up onto the shore to lay their eggs in the sand on the shore. Then they just gorge themselves for about two weeks, get their weight back, and then fly up to the Arctic. They basically can fly almost pole to pole. If they don’t put all their weight back on in this limited amount of time, they can’t make it up to the Arctic to do their breeding and keep the population going.”
He said that several organizations are trying to restore and enhance the traditional horseshoe crab habitat around Delaware Bay to facilitate that process.
“We’re certainly reviewing more environmental restoration-type projects, especially trying to improve marsh habitat and other things,” he concluded. “We keep losing that kind of habitat from storms and from rising sea level and so forth, and we’re working hard on the permit process for those projects.”
This article was first published in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Building Strong®, Serving the Nation and the Armed Forces 2016-2017 Edition magazine.