ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS

A major project to fix part of Flagler Beach's dunes is being pushed back yet again.

President Joe Biden signed a large defense bill on Friday that includes a water bill that directs the Army Corps of Engineers on major infrastructure projects to improve navigation and protect against storms worsened by climate change. After years of studies and planning, members of Congress push to include their preferred projects in the water bill, typically every two years. This water bill includes 25 project authorizations. But the Army Corps said inflation, design changes and other factors have significantly increased its cost. The water bill also makes it easier for the Corps to shift toward using wetlands and other nature-based solutions to combat flooding.

They are intended to protect sea turtles from being killed and maimed by the vacuum-like suction pumps of hopper dredges during the warmer months when female turtles lay their eggs on Southern beaches. Giant loggerhead sea turtles, protected as a federally threatened species, nest during the spring and summer months on beaches from North Carolina to Florida. Smaller numbers of endangered green and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles lay eggs in the region as well. She also declined to confirm whether the Army Corps plans summer dredging in Brunswick. That falls during the nesting season when sea turtles are abundant in Georgia waters — a period previously off-limits to dredging.

A conservation group is suing in federal court over a U.S. agency's timeline for dredging a Georgia shipping channel, saying dredging in the summertime would threaten rare sea turtles.

The Army Corps of Engineers has built an underwater sill to prevent saltwater intrusion from impacting drinking water supplies along the Mississippi River.

The drought is expected to last through January, threatening the critical supply chain.

The school sits in the flood plain of Coldwater Creek, which was contaminated by nuclear waste from weapons production during World War II.

There is significant radioactive contamination at an elementary school in suburban St. Louis where nuclear weapons were produced during World War II, according to a new report.

— (AP) — There is significant radioactive contamination at an elementary school in suburban St. Louis where nuclear weapons were produced during World War II, according to a new report by environmental investigation consultants. The new report is based on samples taken in August from the school, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The waste was dumped at sites near the St. Louis Lambert International Airport, next to the creek that flows to the Missouri River. Dust samples taken inside the school were found to be contaminated. “The effect of these toxins is cumulative.”For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

There is significant radioactive contamination at an elementary school in suburban St. Louis where nuclear weapons were produced during World War II, according to a new report by environmental investigation consultants. The report by Boston Chemical Data Corp. confirmed fears about contamination at Jana Elementary School in the Hazelwood School District in Florissant raised by a previous Army Corps of Engineers study. The new report is based on samples taken in August from the school, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

NEW ORLEANS — (AP) — Drought upriver has left the Mississippi River so low and slow that salt water is creeping farther than usual along the bottom toward New Orleans and threatening drinking water, the Army Corps of Engineers said Wednesday. The Corps said deepening the river also lets the annual saltwater intrusion grow bigger and last longer, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. Drought farther up the Mississippi and its tributaries is why the river has remained so low, Corps spokesperson Matt Roe said in an email. The river is deeper than the Gulf of Mexico almost to Natchez, Mississippi, and about every 10 years it becomes too slow to keep salt water away from the New Orleans area, Jones said. When the river gets higher and stronger, he said, the current will both push back the salt water and push down the sill.

“We appreciate the Corps’ willingness to reverse itself and make things right," Twin Pines President Steve Ingle said in a statement, calling the development “great news" for the project. They urged the Army Corps of Engineers to deny the project a permit. Without oversight by the Army Corps, the only regulatory approval Alabama-based Twin Pines needs is from Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division. Two decades ago, chemical giant DuPont retreated from plans to mine outside the Okefenokee after meeting fierce resistance. Twin Pines wants permits to mine a small fraction of the acreage DuPont pursued.

A company seeking to mine in southeast Georgia near the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp says the project is back on track after a federal agency reversed a June decision that had temporarily blocked it.

According to a government memo, Friday, June 3, 2022, a federal agency has delivered a big setback to a company's controversial plan to mine at the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp's vast wildlife refuge. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton, File) (Stephen B. Morton)SAVANNAH, Ga. — (AP) — A federal agency has delivered a big setback to a company's controversial plan to mine near the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp and its vast wildlife refuge. The Twin Pines project in Georgia will require consultation with the Muscogee Creek Nation before it can move forward, the memo said. “I am pleased to announce the restoration of protection for this wildlife refuge and its surrounding wetlands,” Ossoff said in a statement late Friday. Twin Pines wants permits to mine a small fraction of the acreage DuPont pursued.

The Army Corps said in a memo that a previous decision allowing the project to move ahead was no longer valid because the corps had failed to properly consult with tribal stakeholders.

SAVANNAH, Ga. — (AP) — A federal agency delivered a big setback Friday to a company's controversial plan to mine near the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp and its vast wildlife refuge. He said the prior decisions allowing them to bypass federal regulators “are not valid” because tribal governments with ancestral ties to the proposed mining sites had not been consulted. The Twin Pines project in Georgia will require consultation with the Muscogee Creek Nation before it can move forward, the memo said. Two decades ago, chemical giant DuPont retreated from plans to mine outside the Okefenokee after meeting fierce resistance. Twin Pines wants permits to mine a small fraction of the acreage DuPont pursued.

A federal agency has delivered a big setback to a company's controversial plan to mine at the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp's vast wildlife refuge.

NEW ORLEANS — (AP) — Seventeen years after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers has completed an extensive system of floodgates, strengthened levees and other protections. The 130-mile (210-kilometer) ring is designed to hold out storm surge of about 30 feet (9 meters) around New Orleans and suburbs in three parishes. Congress provided $14.5 billion for what is formally called the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System and related projects. The levees stood up to Hurricane Ida in 2021, though some suburbs outside the system flooded. Features added since then include armoring levees to prevent erosion and scouring when stronger storm surges rise above their tops, and three permanent canal closures and pumps.

Seventeen years after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers has completed an extensive system of floodgates, strengthened levees and other protections.

Sea level rise along the Central Florida coast could impact residents who live inland, and it could get worse if the region experiences a major hurricane.

In Galveston Bay and along the Gulf Coast, the Army Corps of Engineers has proposed the largest project in its history.

The mud- and rust-encrusted guns were discovered by accident as the Georgia riverbed was being dredged. Researchers suspect they came from British ships scuttled to the river bottom in 1779.

A warehouse along the Savannah River is holding historical treasures that evidence suggests remained lost for more than 240 years — a cache of 19 cannons that researchers suspect came from British ships scuttled to the river bottom during the American Revolution. Archaeologists guessed they were possibly leftover relics from a sunken Confederate gunship excavated a few years earlier in the same area, said Andrea Farmer, an archaeologist for the Army Corps of Engineers. Further research indicates they're likely almost a century older and sank during the buildup to the Revolutionary War's bloody siege of Savannah in 1779.

The Biden administration has announced the release of $14 billion to the Army Corps of Engineers to fund 500 projects aimed at easing the supply chain problem.

Florida boaters motoring between the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico cannot take the east-west Okeechobee Waterway beginning Jan. 4. Here's why.

"As long as I can remember pigs have always been an issue," vice mayor of Corona, California, Wes Speake, said. "They are not cute cuddly things you see on TV."

SCENES FROM THE LONG, SLOW DROWNING OF THE NEW JERSEY SHORE. FROM A SATELLITE’S point of view, New Jersey’s barrier islands barely register, like fine white bones pulled from a body of green, separated by a vascular tissue of wetlands and shallow bays. Twenty thousand years ago, when the Laurentide ice sheet covered much of Canada and the northern United States, the coast of what would be New Jersey reached to the edge of the continental shelf, nearly 100 miles east of the present shoreline. For

The sea wall the Army Corps is proposing would protect only 6 miles of downtown and the financial district from a storm surge

Ojibwe women — water protectors — have been leading a seven-year battle against the Enbridge Inc. tar sands pipeline in Minnesota. Now the president is their 'only hope'

A federal agency said Tuesday that machines designed to inject extra oxygen for fish to breathe in the Savannah harbor passed a second round of tests that were required as part of the $973 million deepening of the shipping channel to the Port of Savannah. The Army Corps of Engineers released a 172-page report that concluded testing last summer found the injection machines successfully offset a small loss of dissolved oxygen in the water as the river gets deepened to make room for larger cargo ships. The Army Corps spent $100 million to build a pair of stations on the Savannah River equipped with large machines that suck in water, swirl it with oxygen pulled from the air and inject the mixture back into the river that’s home to blue crabs, striped bass and endangered shortnose sturgeon.

Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency in seven Florida counties to combat the potentially toxic green algae bloom. While the South Florida Water Management District supported the decision to release water to the St. Lucie Estuary, spokesman Randy Smith said they will closely monitor salinity levels. With rainy season approaching in May, South Florida is still soggy from Tropical Storm Eta last year. If they go wrong, everything goes wrong,” said South Florida Water Management District board member Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch in a February meeting. The Army Corps makes weekly decisions on lake levels, and Perry hopes the water releases end before the April oyster spawning.

The GAO said the Army Corps of Engineers is helping to expand existing vaccine facilities, but it can’t be done overnight. The Biden administration has said it is increasing vaccine shipments to states by 20%, to 13.5 million doses a week, and encouraged states to give out all their shots instead of holding on to some for second doses. The company told the GAO it will have only 2 million doses ready to go by the time the vaccine is authorized, whereas its $1 billion contract with HHS scheduled 12 million doses by the end of February. A Johnson & Johnson spokesman declined to comment on the cause of the delay, but said the company still expects to ship 100 million U.S. doses by July. If regulators approve, it would take two or three months to change over production, Moderna spokesman Ray Jordan said on Feb. 13.

The interior least tern, a hardy Midwestern bird that survived a craze for its plumage and dam-building that destroyed much of its habitat, has soared off the endangered species list. (AP Photo/Dave Martin File)TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – The interior least tern, a hardy Midwestern bird that survived a craze for its plumage and dam-building that destroyed much of its habitat, has soared off the endangered species list. Environmental groups that sometimes have opposed dropping species from the endangered list supported the removal of the interior least tern. “We consider it an Endangered Species Act success story for sure,” said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity. But he cautioned that vigilance was needed to make sure the bird's river habitat remains secure.

As high tide laps against the sea wall tourist walk down the Battery in Charleston, S.C. Friday, Nov. 13, 2020. Others fear the wall will damage wetlands and wildlife, or that poor neighborhoods will be left out of flooding solutions. The barrier is reminiscent of fortifications that colonists built around Charleston 350 years ago to keep out invaders, but the Corps says the new wall is designed to keep out storm surge. The agency's proposal includes a floating breakwater offshore and some nonstructural measures, such as raising homes not situated behind the sea wall. Whether the city builds the wall or not, the process has accelerated the conversation Charleston needs to have about sea level rise, said Winslow Hastie of the Historic Charleston Foundation.

The company seeking to develop Pebble Mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay has long promised that the controversial project would bring Alaska jobs, economic growth and tax revenue. But newly released undercover videos made by an environmental advocacy group show that Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. expects a massive state subsidy for the giant mine. Boasts by Collier about Pebble’s influence over Alaskan politicians embarrassed the company and hardened opposition from the state’s two U.S. senators. The corps’ Alaska office issued a statement Thursday saying it had not yet received a mitigation plan, but would review it and announce a decision on the mine permit. Danielle Fest Grabiel, a manager at the Environmental Investigation Agency, defended the organization’s decision to record the video under false pretenses.

BISMARCK, N.D. The Army Corps of Engineers is recommending that the federal government negotiate a settlement with North Dakota for more than $38 million that the state spent policing protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. North Dakota Republican U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer called the recommendation very significant and the right thing to do for the federal government. North Dakota assumed all costs including the cleanup of actions facilitated by the Corps of Engineers, Cramer said Tuesday. Thousands of opponents gathered in southern North Dakota in 2016 and early 2017, camping on federal land and often clashing with police. If not, we will prepare for trial.Stenehjem said North Dakota has a strong case and holds the upper hand in negotiations now with the federal judges ruling last month.

Theres a certain number of places where we have concerns and theyre: Chicago, Michigan, Florida, Louisiana, Hyten told a group of reporters, when asked where field hospitals could head next. Lieutenant General Todd Semonite, the Corps commander, said the Corps was looking at potentially converting 114 facilities in the United States into hospitals. Asked about Hytens remarks, Semonite said he continued to be concerned about Michigan, Florida and Louisiana and had spoken with the governor of Louisiana. Each ship has a capacity of about 1,000 beds and would not treat coronavirus patients, instead taking pressure off overwhelmed civilian hospitals. He estimated that the military only had 1,329 adult hospital beds staffed at any one time in the United States.

Montague, Michigan Three of the five Great Lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior broke all January records for water levels, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. When Tish Gancer looks out at the waters of Lake Michigan, she sees the final resting place of her house. Across the Great Lakes, the inundation has been accompanied by more frequent and intense storms that have stripped away the sandy base of beachfront homes. A home toppled due to erosion on Lake Michigan. The last two years were the wettest in nearly a century for the Great Lakes, virtually ensuring another season of unusually high water levels that could turn dream homes into nightmares.

Flagler Beach residents at the south end of town are getting no breaks. Most beaches have such a line, as does the entire length of the project in Flagler Beach. Flagler Beach confirmed the customary use of the beach by the public with an ordinance in 2018, as did the county. That makes the erosion control line in Flagler Beach more of a technicality. Flagler Beach is very fortunate to have this project.

A workshop and public hearing on the next step in Flagler County's dune restoration project attracted abouty 70 residents to the Government Services Building in Bunnell. BUNNELL Defining the border between private and public lands for beach restoration projects as an "erosion control line," officials involved with Flagler County's dune restoration efforts staged a workshop and public hearing this week to address the issue. The multiyear project is designed to restore protective dunes along State Road A1A in Flagler Beach, specifically an area from South 7th Street to South 28th Street that was damaged by Hurricane Matthew in 2016. "In the state of Florida, if you're going to build a beach restoration project, an erosion control line is required by Florida statute," he said. "Flagler Beach is very lucky to have this project," he said.

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredging project poised to remove over 400,000 cubic yards of sand and material from the Intracoastal Waterway in St. Johns and Flagler counties got underway this weekA U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredging project poised to remove over 400,000 cubic yards of beach-quality sand and material from the Intracoastal Waterway in St. Johns and Flagler counties got underway this week. Spokespersons from the federal agencys Jacksonville office announced the start of the maintenance effort in a statement released Wednesday. "Maintenance dredging of the (Intracoastal) helps us improve conditions for boaters using the (Intracoastal) in that safer navigation is achieved by removing dangerous shoals," Shelley Trulock, Army Corps project manager with the Jacksonville District, said in the statement. [READ ALSO: Corps awards $5.9M for dredging near Matanzas Inlet]Army Corps officials announced in July that Indiana dredging firm Southwind Construction Corporation had been hired as the lead contractor to do the work at a cost of $5.9 million. The project is expected to last six months.

Flagler County in coordination with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on October 22 will host a workshop followed by a public hearing to address the creation of an Erosion Control Line along the upcoming 2.8 mile Army Corps of Engineers project within the city limits of Flagler Beach. The Erosion Control Line in this instance will be established at the Mean High Water Line as surveyed in July 2019. It will fix the boundary between the upland property owners regardless of future beach erosion or accretion and the submerged land owned by the State of Florida. Those with questions regarding the Flagler County-Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Storm Risk Management Project should contact Richard Gordon, Flagler County Assistant Engineer, at 386-313-4006 or by email at rgordon@flaglercounty.org. For questions regarding the Erosion Control Line, please contact William Guy Weeks, Florida Department of Environmental Protection Project Manager, at 850-245-7696 or by email at william.weeks@floridadep.gov.

Flagler County officials have scheduled a workshop and public hearing for 6 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 to discuss the creation of an "erosion control line" along the upcoming Army Corps of Engineers dune restoration project in Flagler Beach. Flagler County officials have scheduled a workshop and public hearing for 6 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 to discuss the creation of an "erosion control line" along the Army Corps of Engineers' dune restoration project in Flagler Beach. This includes the Army Corps project between South 6th and South 28th streets that is scheduled to begin in May 2020. Anyone with questions regarding the Flagler County-Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Storm Risk Management Project should contact Richard Gordon, Flagler County Assistant Engineer, at 386-313-4006 or by email at rgordon@flaglercounty.org. For questions regarding the erosion control line, contact William Guy Weeks, Florida Department of Environmental Protection project manager, at 850-245-7696 or by email at william.weeks@floridadep.gov.

A 10-day experiment has started in which a floating skimmer slurps the algae, cleans it, and returns it to the lake. Lake Okeechobee has a rash of blue-green algae along its western edge stretching from Taylor Creek in the north to near Clewiston in the south. Unfortunately for researchers this week, there was no blue-green algae visible at the Moore Haven Lock and Dam where the car door-shaped skimmer floated, attached to a stretch of boom meant to direct the algae toward it. Skolte said water with algae in it can be brought to the skimmer so the removal process can still be tested. The study is part of a series of projects the Corps Engineer Research and Development Center is working on to manage and prevent blue-green algae.

The changes to 11-year-old federal guidelines that regulate lake levels are needed to avoid harmful algae blooms in northern estuaries, according to an internal Corps letter. Changes in how Lake Okeechobee is managed are in such an immediate need that the Army Corps of Engineers is rushing through rule amendments without public comment a hastiness that has raised concerns about potential water shortages in Palm Beach County. The push for changes comes as a blue-green algae bloom has developed in the northern and western sections of Lake Okeechobee. Lake Okeechobee discharges can seed the estuaries with algae, while also diluting them with freshwater that encourages algae growth. The proposed action will enhance the ability of the Corps to respond to harmful algae blooms within its authority.U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, R-Palm City, and Gov.