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How the Hydroelectric Design Center Supports the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Crucial Hydropower Services
The sun sets over John Day Lock and Dam in eastern Oregon. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ role in supporting the national grid is to operate and maintain its generating assets to assure the highest level of reliability and stability and to ensure that it can deliver power to power marketing administrations.
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he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has many crucial roles: It maintains the nation’s navigable waterways, it works to reduce flood risk, it engages in civil engineering projects both at home and abroad, and it helps rebuild war-torn areas. Less known to many is that the Army Corps is also the largest single owner-operator of hydropower and clean energy plants in the United States, with 75 hydropower stations. The entity in charge of maintaining the engineering and design of this hydropower fleet is the Hydroelectric Design Center (HDC) in Portland, Oregon, the professionals of which provide hydropower planning, engineering, and design services and also serve as the “Maytag repairmen and women” of the Army Corps. In this interview, HDC Deputy Director John Etzel tells Hydro Leader about the Army Corps’ role in supporting the national energy grid and how the HDC helps enable it.
John Etzel: I have a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Oregon State University and a master’s in public administration from the University of Colorado. I worked in private industry for about a year before beginning to work for the Army Corps in 1986. My first position at the Army Corps was as a structural engineer in Portland, Oregon. I have also held other positions within the Army Corps, including technical lead and project manager. In 2004, I started working for the HDC in Portland as its first project management branch chief. In 2010, I was selected to serve as the deputy director of the HDC, the role I currently hold.
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Hydro Leader: Would you give a general introduction to the history of the Army Corps and its relation to the rest of the Army? John Etzel: The Army Corps’ history dates back to 1775, when General George Washington needed engineering support to design and construct military fortifications. The Army Corps’ fortifications were instrumental in defending the new nation. I think the Army Corps’ best-known modern-day legacy is the civil works mission we carry out on the nation’s rivers. Rivers were identified as a strategic highway of our new nation from both a military and a commercial perspective, and the Army Corps was commissioned to keep the nation’s waterways free from snags and sandbars. As the dam-building era began in the early 1900s with the dream of harnessing hydropower, Congress asked the Army Corps to maintain the balance of damming up the nation’s waterways while assuring that they remained navigable. The Army Corps was put in charge of providing approval to individuals who wanted to dam rivers. The Army Corps also designed and built two small hydropower plants in the early 1900s on the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers. Under the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS PHOTO BY DALE QUINTON.
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
I work with a team of 170 professionals who support the hydropower planning, engineering, and design for the Army Corps’ 75 hydro power plants across the nation. I’ve been humbled to serve such amazing professionals in my 34 years of public service, tackling some of the nation’s toughest water resource challenges.
