KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- By the end of this post-pandemic year, it was apparent that we would finish strong, and we did. In fiscal year 2023, we had total obligations of over $625 million and 1,354 total contracts.
“Our entire team has worked with national, state, regional and local partners to support the Heartland in many critical ways. I am proud of our work to support the people and governments in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado,” said Col. Travis Rayfield, commander, Kansas City District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
We improved and repaired things.
We substantially completed pump station improvements. Prior to this, over a dozen existing pump stations posed an unacceptable level of risk to the community.
Our team, comprised of 100+ non-federal partners, engineers, geologists, specialists, construction managers, project managers, contractors, labors, stakeholders etc., embraced a common vision to aggressively deliver these complex pump station improvements. We successfully met our goals to complete the mission and significantly lessened flood risks to the 30,000 people and $10 billion of infrastructure located behind the levee units.
Our Missouri riverbank stabilization and navigation project team worked on repairs to rock-filled river training structures and flow-control structures damaged in the 2019 flood event. Repair work consisted of placing new rock fill to return the structures to design lines and grades. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $248 million to repair those devices that are on the lower stretch of the Missouri River.
We continued to partner with local levee and drainage districts and municipalities to make further improvements. This proved invaluable as the region has experienced historic destruction from floods in 1953, 1993, 2011 and 2019.
We reduced the risk of flooding.
Our Mega project, Kansas City’s Levees Program, also known as the KC Levees, is one of the largest and most complex civil works projects the Kansas City District has delivered. The goal is to reduce the risk of flooding by 200 percent through improving the resiliency and reliability of 17 miles of existing levee and floodwall systems within the Argentine, Armourdale and Central Industrial District areas of Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri.
The KC Levees program consists of seven levee units including 60 miles of levees and floodwalls along both banks of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers in the Kansas City Metropolitan area. The system protects 32 square miles of industrial, commercial and residential areas, and includes 100,000 jobs, 7,000 structures and $22 billion in investments.
The collaborative effort between the Kansas City District, the Kaw Valley Drainage District, the unified governments of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, and the City of Kansas City, Missouri will reduce the risk of flooding, improve the reliability and resiliency of the systems, strengthen aging infrastructure and ensure the levees and floodwalls perform during future flood events.
Our goal is to complete the $529 million project by 2026. This final phase will complete nearly 15 years of construction on the system. Improvements are complete for the Fairfax/Jersey Creek, North Kansas City and East Bottoms Units along the Missouri River.
Throughout our area of operations, we manage 850 miles of levees and floodwalls and have prevented an estimated $45 billion in flood damages through our levee and reservoir projects.
We facilitated river navigation.
The Missouri River has continued to sustain the nation’s economy through our navigation program, even during times of extreme low flows. The use of inland waterways increases competition and reduces the price of goods, saving the American people money and reducing supply chain issues.
The Missouri River is one of two primary navigable marine highway routes, which provides inland waterway access to over $60 billion in annual agricultural export commodities to the heartland and the nation. Utilizing the Lower Missouri River Basin for moving cargo saves the American people $47.6 million annually. We engineer resilient and sustainable solutions, as a trusted federal partner, so that our economy can continue to flow through the heartland.
We supported the Department of Defense.
In September, the Fort Leonard Wood Hospital Replacement Project marked the major milestone of hitting one million hours worked since its groundbreaking in November 2020. We are replacing a 50-year-old medical facility with a new hospital with 44 inpatient-beds and a primary care clinic. This new medical facility will serve 5,700 active-duty soldiers, 20,400 trainees, families and retirees.
Also, for Fort Leonard Wood we were awarded a $31.8 million contract for Advanced Individual training barracks buildings to provide renovations of three story, permanent construction barracks facilities built in the 1960s, which currently house AIT trainees. Renovations will address congested spaces, circulation issues, inadequate unit storage, lack of classroom space, and will facilitate gender integrated training.
In September we were awarded a $32.95 million contract for a design-bid-build barracks renovation project at Fort Riley that includes renovation of four separate barracks with numerous improvements and reconfiguration to single room apartment style units with shared living spaces.
We are building the Next National Geospatial Agency West, the largest federal investment project in the history of St. Louis. This $1.7 billion project is managed by the Kansas City District and executed by McCarthy HITT Joint Venture, with oversight by NGA and the U.S. Air Force. The project will feature an approximately 712,000 square foot office building, parking garages, visitor center, inspection facility and access control points. It will be a secure facility for over 3,000 Department of Defense employees supporting national security.
We provided clean energy.
The Harry S. Truman hydropower plant in Warsaw, Mo., and the Stockton power plant in Stockton, Mo., generated 100,940,000 kWh, enough to power 7,600 homes.
In addition, these two lake projects, Truman and Stockton, prevented $2.2billion in cumulative flood damages.
We protected the environment.
We signed a $8.35 million Project Partnership Agreement for aquatic ecosystem restoration work at Rathbun Lake, Iowa, with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. This agreement will begin aquatic ecosystem restoration design and construction work at Rathbun Lake, Iowa under Section 1135 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986. The Kansas City District has been working with the Iowa DNR over the past several years to determine feasibility and to develop a conceptual design for this project.
We supported small business.
We initiated 814 contracts with small businesses worth $319 million. Small business accounted for 61 percent of total contracts and 53 percent of total obligations.
We supported other projects.
Our Technology Management Office, a branch of the Construction Management Innovation Office within our district headquarters, is working hard to develop and deliver a new construction management platform. The new platform will be designed to foster a more efficient, collaborative working environment by streamlining and modernizing current construction management processes.