President Obama Releases the First Update to the Rules for Army Corps Project Selection Criteria in More Than Thirty Years

The new Interagency Guidelines will enable the Corps to consider 

projects that promote and protect natural ecosystem functions, like floodplains.  

Photo credit: Chris Young 

Yesterday was a big day for rivers.  On December 17, President Obama’s Council on Environmental Quality released the final Interagency Guidelines, the companion to the Principles and Requirements that were finalized in March 2013.  These guidance documents outline how Federal agencies, like the Army Corps of Engineers, are supposed to make decisions about how to spend your taxpayer dollars. 

It’s shocking to realize that the last time these guidelines were updated was in 1983.  A lot has changed since the Police topped the Billboard Charts with “Every Breath You Take,” Return of the Jedi was released, and otherwise respectable people regularly wore legwarmers.  It’s actually been so long that Sting has reemerged as a popular solo artist, the Star Wars trilogy was tragically remade, and I’m knitting all my friends fashionable leg warmers for Christmas.  But here’s what hasn't changed in all that time: the Army Corps of Engineers is still making decisions based on outdated and ecologically unsustainable principles laid out by James Watt (Ronald Reagan’s controversial Interior Secretary, not the famous 18^th Century inventor). 

In all seriousness, during the thirty years since these guidelines were last updated, science and research has expanded our understanding of ecosystem services and how naturally functioning environments can provide a suite of economic, social, public safety, and social justice benefits.  That’s why its great news that the final Interagency Guidelines released this week will recognize and institutionalize some of these diverse benefits. 

The new Interagency Guidelines will replace the – yet to come back in fashion – 1983 system of evaluating traditional economic benefits, like a business’ profit margin, against poorly quantified environmental losses.  The new guidance will require federal agencies to evaluate project alternatives against six guiding principles.  These principles seek to

1. Improve ecosystem health and resiliency;
2. Encourage economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable development;
3. Discourage development in floodplains;
4. Enhance public safety;
5. Avoid negative impacts to communities that are already at risk due to economic, health, safety, social, and/or environmental factors; and
6. Evaluate all decisions on a watershed scale.

While evaluating alternatives under these principles, the agencies will consider several new and important factors, like long-term decommissioning costs for large projects, ways that environmental degradation can hurt the economy, and the social fabric of communities that depend on the rivers that flow through them.  Agencies will also be required to consider and evaluate project alternatives that restore naturally functioning ecosystems.

These new guidelines should require decision-making that leads to taxpayer-funded projects that truly benefit the public and the environment, not just corporate special interests. 

But while this guidance is a good first step, it really is just a first step.  This guidance covers many federal agencies, and each of them has to translate these new guidelines into action. Over the next several months, these agencies – not just the Corps, but also the Department of the Interior, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, among others – will be working to prepare Agency Specific Procedures for implementing this new guidance. 

American Rivers is ready to engage with these agencies through what will hopefully be a robust and open public process over the next several months to develop these procedures. We plan to make sure they get it right. After all, it could be thirty years before we get this chance again!

Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock Disposition Study

I am really excited this week to learn the magic words for initiating the decommissioning process for infrastructure managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers.  “Disposition studies” re-evaluate federal interest in any particular project and lay out alternatives for decommissioning the specified infrastructure. 

As you probably know already, Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock will be closed in June 2015 due to insufficient traffic.  Although the real reason the Minnesota Congressional delegation pushed to close the lock was to create a permanent barrier against advancing Asian carp.  The Corps’ draft environmental assessment for the closure will be available for review by the end of December 2014 and will be open for 30 days for public comments.

The assessment will review two alternatives: 1. Open the lock for the start of the shipping season and closing it in June or 2. Don’t reopen the lock after winter.  The Corps only plans to look at the shipping impacts above Upper St. Anthony Falls, not below it or in Pool 1.  Although, it’s possible that shipping will drop precipitously in the Twin Cities after the northern lock is closed. 

The assessment that is being drafted only reviews the immediate future of the lock, i.e. the imminent closure.  To plan beyond the closure, the Corps will request $200-350,000 for an Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock Disposition Study in the next fiscal year to evaluate a long term plan for the closed lock.  Obviously, if left alone, it will deteriorate, fall apart, become a safety hazard, and fail to provide a barrier to invading carp. 

The disposition study will evaluate options like deauthorizing the 9-foot channel above the lock, altering the lock, or replacing the lock with some other kind of structure that creates a barrier to advancing fish but still allowing flood waters to pass through.  The study could also provide an opportunity to plan a portage around the falls for all those brave souls who paddle Old Man River from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico.

When the environmental assessment is available for review, I’ll write about it here.  And since I usually do a budget request blog, you can expect to see more information about the disposition study when it becomes available.