April 15, 2020
Earth Day 2020: Reinforcing our commitment to the environment
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will join one billion people in 190 countries around the world celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. This year's observances will certainly be curtailed as we honor social distancing policies due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, while we won't gather for celebrations and seminars, our team will still remember April 22 and its meaning. Earth Day is a time to remember USACE's commitment to enhance and protect the environment for the Nation at large and for our Soldiers.

For the Nation, we have restored ecosystems and cleaned up contaminated sites. The Corps has incorporated environmental benefits into our project designs for navigation, hydropower, flood risk management and water supply. We have developed systems that decrease the movement of Asian Carp near the Great Lakes as well as critical invasive aquatic plant management tools that generate benefits to water treatment facilities, public health and tourism. Our team has applied Engineering With Nature(r) principles that yield higher performing projects with increased environmental benefits. We will continue to develop new strategic prediction, detection and prevention tools for managing invasive and nuisance species such as harmful algal blooms. And, the Corps will continue to support the Department of Defense's efforts to address contamination challenges related to pervasive per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Guided by our Environmental Operating Principles, we will continue to satisfy the Nation's expectations of us in conservation, management and improvement of the Nation's natural environment.

For our Soldiers, USACE provides capabilities to Army installation managers to successfully steward their millions of acres of military lands and technology to make installations efficient and self-sufficient. We use our understanding of the built and natural environment to provide guidance and technology to our Soldiers for mission success while serving forward. Structures, vegetation, soils, hydrology, temperature, ice, permafrost and subterranean environments pose threats to them and challenges to maneuverability. American troops want accurate information about the environments they are entering before their boots hit the ground. To answer that call, we are developing high-fidelity map overlays of natural and urban environments. The Corps is developing technology to locate industrial complexes, identify toxic industrial chemicals and materials and predict the impact of chemical releases on missions. We want to keep our Soldiers safe and successful everywhere.

We have always used expertise and capabilities from across the Corps in new ways to meet new challenges. During the COVID-19 fight, our team has pulled together knowledge in structural and medical facility design, contracting and construction to develop designs and guidelines for alternative care facilities. Our environmental community was also called upon to model the outbreak to determine when and where these facilities would be needed. Corps human health, virology, risk assessment, resilience, computational modeling, geospatial science, high- performance computing and machine learning experts were assembled to rapidly deploy a predictive model of the pandemic. Their goal was to deliver the information about the potential spread of the virus in ways that help leaders make hard decisions quickly about when and where to place facilities.

On this 50th Earth Day, be proud of our service to the Nation, proud of our protection of Soldiers no matter where they are and proud of our commitment to the Nation's environmental improvement.

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