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Solution Builders Established under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1866, the Philadelphia District manages the water resources of the entire Delaware River Basin and of the Atlantic Coast in Delaware and most of New Jersey, serving more than nine million people in five states. We also directly support two military installations -- Dover Air Force Base, Del. and Fort Dix, N.J. -- along with relocation of the Army's C4ISR high-tech systems R&D program to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. In addition to our own programs, we provide technical and project management services for the EPA and other government agencies on a reimbursable basis. Most of our approximately 500 employees work out of the home office in the Wanamaker Building across from Philadelphia’s City Hall, with the rest at field locations throughout the District’s 15,000-square-mile geographic area. District Contacts -- District Offices Military Construction Dover’s massive C-5 and C-17 transports move people, equipment and supplies around the world. The District has completed a number of construction projects in support of the host 436th Military Airlift Wing, most notably the new Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs, the Defense Department’s sole stateside mortuary. Leading our current list of projects is the $78 million Air Freight Terminal complex, along with new Air Traffic Control Tower and Flight Simulator facilities. Fort Dix, an Army Reserve Command installation, trains and deploys the nation’s armed forces and also serves as a platform for mobilizing and deploying reserve units overseas. In the past few years, the District has constructed ammunition storage and vehicle wash facilities and completed a major barracks renovation, and we are now building a new Regional Readiness Support Center and an apron/taxiway serving Fort Dix and adjacent McGuire Air Force Base. At Aberdeen Proving Ground, the Philadelphia District has been tasked with building the facilities and related infrastructure to accommodate the Army's research and development activities for Command and Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Sensors and Reconnaissance (C4ISR), moving from Fort Monmouth, N.J. under the Base Realignment And Closure Act of 2005. A March 2008 groundbreaking ceremony marked the start of construction on a $500+ million design-build contract for Phase I. Navigation The Philadelphia District maintains more than 550 miles of navigable waterways, including the 40-foot-deep Delaware River federal navigation channel from Philadelphia to the Atlantic. We are currently working with the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (the nonfederal sponsor) on a project partnership agreement to deepen this channel to 45 feet. Philadelphia, Camden, Wilmington and other Delaware River ports handle more than 100 million tons of goods annually and are home to the largest petrochemical complex on the Atlantic. Philadelphia alone is the world’s largest inland freshwater port. The District operates and maintains the 14-mile-long Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which serves as the northern gateway to the Port of Baltimore. Ship traffic in the C&D is controlled 24 hours a day from the District’s project office in Chesapeake City, MD. We also own and maintain four high-level highway bridges across the canal. Other navigation projects include the Delaware River from Trenton to Philadelphia, the Schuylkill River, Wilmington Harbor, the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway, and many coastal harbors and inlets in New Jersey and Delaware. The District operates the McFarland, one of only four Corps-owned oceangoing hopper dredges. With more than 40 officers and crew, the McFarland has two missions—emergency and national defense dredging worldwide, and planned dredging along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Flood Damage Reduction The District also protects communities in the Delaware River Basin from flooding while providing water supply and enhancing both water quality and recreation. After the 1955 floods that claimed ninety lives and 100 million dollars in property damage, a comprehensive study of the Delaware River Basin—the first such study in the U.S.—was followed by construction of five earthfill dams that the District operates in eastern Pennsylvania: Blue Marsh Lake near Reading; Beltzville Lake and Francis E. Walter Dam in the Poconos; and Prompton Lake and Jadwin Dam in the northeastern corner of the state. More recently the District has constructed projects that reduce flood damages largely by means of channel and streambank modifications. These include Aquashicola Creek at Palmerton, Pa., built in the late 1990s; Little Mill Creek at Elsmere, Del., completed in 2007; and Molly Ann's Brook, a multiphase project serving Haledon, Prospect Park and Paterson, N.J., also completed in 2007. In addition, largely in response to basinwide flooding in 2004, 2005 and 2006, the District is conducting three large-scale, watershed-based feasibility studies to identify, evaluate and develop water resource management solutions: Upper Delaware River (N.Y.), Delaware River Basin Comprehensive (N.J.) and Red Clay Creek (Del.). Storm Damage Reduction The Philadelphia District is especially noted for the key role it plays in protecting the New Jersey and Delaware coasts. Our first storm damage reduction project is still doing its job at Indian River Inlet, Del., where we installed a unique sand bypassing plant that continuously transports sand from the south side of the inlet to the north side for beach replenishment. Over the past 15 years the District has built major beachfill projects at Brigantine, Atlantic City and Ventnor, Ocean City, Avalon and Stone Harbor, Cape May and Cape May Point in New Jersey, and at Lewes, Rehoboth and Dewey Beaches and Fenwick Island in Delaware. The Ocean City and Cape May projects have also seen several cycles of periodic renourishment. Initial beachfill placement was recently completed at Surf City, N.J. -- the first phase in a multiphase project along Long Beach Island, soon to be followed by a second phase at nearby Harvey Cedars -- and at Bethany Beach and South Bethany, Del. We have also built improved seawalls at Avalon (Townsends Inlet) and down the Jersey shore at North Wildwood (Hereford Inlet). Environmental Programs Within our regulatory authority governing work in the region’s waters and wetlands, the District processes about 2,500 permit applications annually and is a Corps leader in average turnaround, completing 85 percent of all applications within 60 days and 100 percent within 120 days. In this role we have also been involved with the states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in projects to compensate for lost wetlands. We have also completed several civil projects (with more under study or design) whose primary purpose is ecosystem restoration. Foremost is at New Jersey’s Lower Cape May Meadows (in conjunction with the Cape May Point project mentioned above), where installation of a protective beachfill-and-dune system, eradication of marsh reeds, and reseeding of native vegetation are all helping preserve freshwater migratory bird habitat. Other recent environmental projects include construction of fish ladders along New Jersey’s Batsto and Cooper Rivers and demolition and removal of an old dam along the Neversink River at Cuddebackville, N.Y. Another fish ladder project is now underway at Philadelphia's historic Fairmount Dam, along with an ecosystem restoration project at Grover's Mill Pond, N.J. Under the Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) for sites involved in the Manhattan Project, the District is removing contaminated material at the DuPont Chambers Works plant in Deepwater, N.J. Interagency Services For more than two decades the District has managed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund projects in New Jersey, and accounts for a major share of the Corps’ support to the program nationwide. We started with remediation of the Krysowaty Farm site in Somerset County, which in 1986 became the first site delisted from the EPA's National Priorities List, then in the 1990s completed initial cleanup at Bridgeport Rental and Oil Services -- still one of the largest and most complex Superfund cleanup efforts to date -- and The District supports FEMA not only in disaster response (under the National Response Plan), but also with GIS-based technical services for flood insurance studies and hurricane evacuation plans. We have completed several projects for the Coast Guard, most recently the rehabilitation of the vertical lift bridge in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Among our newest customers are the Department of Housing and Urban Development; the Department of Veterans Affairs; the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division; and the National Park Service.
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