At 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, whether or not I can attend a service or commemoration, I plan to pause and reflect on Veteran’s Day on the service and sacrifice of millions of American men and women who have served our nation in uniform with distinction in each service branch. Occasionally, I try to shine a spotlight on that service, and at this moment, I salute our U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has roughly 37,000 civilian and military personnel (97% civilian). For comparison, the U.S. Army has approximately 400,000 active-duty members. Our USACE remains one of the world’s most extensive public engineering, design, and construction management agencies. Though predominantly located domestically, the USACE operates in Europe and the Middle East.
Georgia is within the Corps’ South Atlantic Division, which serves six states. This geographic region also contains a third of the stateside U.S. Army and its bases and one-fifth of the U.S. Air Force. The Corps and this region also include the world’s largest environmental restoration project in the Everglades.
The USACE supports the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and FEMA in security planning, disaster preparedness, emergency response, service force protection, and research development efforts.
The Corps is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has an approximate annual budget of $8 billion. Though Florida is home to more than 7,000 named lakes, Georgia is a state where all lakes and larger bodies of water are man-made, most typically under the guidance of the Army Corps or Georgia Power Company. The Corps is also engaged in flood control, beach replenishment along the Georgia coast, and waterway dredging to improve navigation.
The USACE engineered and constructed dams to capture the waters of the Chattahoochee and Chestatee Rivers in 1950 to form Georgia’s largest enclosed body of water, Lake Sidney Lanier, near Atlanta. It took more than six years for Lanier to reach its complete pool. (Locally, Putnam County’s Lake Sinclair was created in 1953 by Georgia Power damming the Oconee River, with Lake Oconee also made on the Oconee by Georgia Power in 1979. – Ed.)
The Corps’ work also includes marvels of engineering such as the Panama Canal (1914), the channeling of the Los Angeles and Santa Ana Rivers through L.A. via the Flood Control Act of 1941, The Manhattan Project (take that Kuppenheimer), the construction of the Pentagon (1943), and the cross Florida Barge Canal, among others.
USACE work stands the test of time. A young lieutenant and West Point graduate, Robert E. Lee, oversaw the early design and construction of Fort Pulaski on a bluff along the intercoastal on Cockspur Island near Tybee Island. In 1829, Lee, an engineer in the U.S. Army Corps at the time, designed the fort’s drainage and dyke systems that survive to this day.
On Memorial Day, we pause and honor the sacrifice of the men and women in each service branch who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. On Veterans Day, we more broadly recognize all service, in times of war and peace, by every member of each service branch, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard, and even the more nascent Space Force.
While the valor and sacrifice of combat service do further distinguish military service, we all should recall the work to design and build out our railroads, bridges, waterways, power dams, and much of the infrastructure that makes America the global economic powerhouse it remains today. That, in considerable measure, represents the work of the USACE.
Like the plowshare, the engineer’s compass or calculator has immensely contributed to the greatness of the American experiment. Yes, the USACE can be a bit overly bureaucratic at times – and I may speak to that in another column on another day – but for now, I will simply say thank you and salute the continuing good works of our U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Thank you all, civilian and in-uniform personnel, for serving our nation.