After disasters, the Army Corps manages the Operation Blue Roof mission for FEMA.
What Local Entities Should Know About Working With the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
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he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has significant flood control responsibilities, both during times of preparation and during emergency events. During floods, it cooperates with state, county, and local governments, diking districts and levee boards, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other entities. Steve Stockton, a senior advisor to the National Water Resources Association (NWRA) and Water Strategies, worked for the Army Corps for 41 years. In this conversation with Municipal Water Leader Managing Editor Joshua Dill, Mr. Stockton details how the Army Corps works to respond to floods and what local entities should know about working with it.
Steve Stockton: I worked for 41 years for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the last 11 as director of civil works at the Army Corps’s headquarters. Civil works is one of the Army Corps’s two major programs, alongside military programs. The civil works side is responsible for navigation, flood control, aquatic ecosystem restoration, hydropower, and municipal and industrial water supply. It’s a broad range of responsibilities. There are about 25,000 people in the civil works program, and we have about 700 dams, about 240 lock
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Joshua Dill: How does flood control and response fit into the broader range of Army Corps responsibilities? Steve Stockton: It’s one of its primary responsibilities. Most of the Army Corps’s more than 700 dams primarily serve flood-control and navigation functions. However, multipurpose dams, like the ones on the Missouri River, have about eight functions. One function is providing floodcontrol storage, which requires keeping empty space in the reservoir. The other seven functions—hydropower, navigation, water supply, irrigation, fish and wildlife enhancement, and recreation—require retaining water upstream. Reconciling those two needs is a balancing act that depends on the hydrology of the region. The whole Missouri system has been litigated many times. In the early 2000s, the Army Corps, in coordination with other federal, state, and local entities, developed a master manual for the Missouri River, which
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS.
Joshua Dill: For readers who don’t know you, would you please introduce yourself ?
chambers, thousands of miles of levees, and thousands of miles of inland navigable waterways—more than the rest of the world combined. We have an emergency response program to support FEMA under emergency support function 3, which is for public works and engineering. We’re responsible for dredging all the ports in the United States. I retired about 2½ years ago and am currently a senior advisor for the NWRA and Water Strategies.
