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 Tobyhanna Army Depot, Penn -- along with supporting military construction at Joint Base McGuire and other military reserve construction projects in the region.
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.
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 three facilities tied into the post’s mission of caring and honoring the fallen – the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs; the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System Facility; and Joint Personnel Effects Depot. We’ve also built a new Fitness Center, Air Traffic Control Tower, and Flight simulator facilities.
Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst 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.
At Aberdeen Proving Ground, the Philadelphia District was 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. The District completed the nearly billion dollar program on time and on budget in 2011.
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 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 five 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 operates under Ready Reserve status, enabling it to support the nation’s dredging needs.
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 Surf City, Harvey Cedars, 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, Bethany and South Bethany and Fenwick Island in Delaware. The Ocean City, Atlantic City, and Cape May projects have also seen several cycles of periodic renourishment. 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. The District constructed a fishladder at Philadelphia's historic Fairmount Dam, along with an ecosystem restoration project at Grover's Mill Pond, 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, accounting for a major share of the Corps’ support to the program nationwide. We started with initial remedial action at the Lipari Landfill Site, at the time ranked #1 on EPA’s National Priorities List (NPL), and the Bridgeport Rental and Oil Services Site, followed quickly by remediation of the Krysowaty Farm site in Somerset County, which, in 1986, became the first site delisted from the EPA’s National Priorities List.
We conducted further remedial action at the BROS site -- still one of the largest and most complex Superfund cleanup efforts to date -- and Lipari Landfill in the early 1990s. Sites currently active include Welsbach & General Gas Mantle (radiation in soil), Vineland Chemical Company (arsenic in groundwater and soil), Lipari Landfill (organic & inorganic chemicals in groundwater), South Jersey Clothing/Garden State Cleaners (organic chemicals in groundwater), and Cosden Chemical and Coatings (organic chemicals in groundwater). In addition, we provide technical support services to EPA in their Brownfields and RCRA Programs.
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. Among our newest customers for whom we have ongoing work are the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, the National Park Service, and the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Aviation Administration.
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