As the nation’s environmental engineer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages one of the largest federal environmental missions: restoring degraded ecosystems; constructing sustainable facilities; regulating waterways; managing natural resources; and, cleaning up contaminated sites from past military activities.

Our environmental programs support the warfighter and military installations worldwide as well as USACE public recreation facilities throughout the country. In 2002, USACE adopted its seven Environmental Operating Principles, or green ethics, which continue to guide our environmental and sustainability work today.

USACE works in partnership with other federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations and academic institutions to find innovative solutions to challenges that affect everyone – sustainability, climate change, endangered species, environmental cleanup, ecosystem restoration and more.

USACE works to restore degraded ecosystem structure, function and dynamic processes to a more natural condition through large-scale ecosystem restoration projects, such as the Everglades, the Louisiana Coastal Area, the Missouri River, and the Great Lakes, and by employing system-wide watershed approaches to problem solving and management for smaller ecosystem restoration projects. USACE’s regulatory program works to ensure no net loss of wetlands while issuing about 90,000 permits a year.

USACE environmental cleanup programs focus on reducing risk and protecting human health and the environment in a timely and cost-effective manner. USACE manages, designs and executes a full range of cleanup and protection activities.

USACE is striving to restore ecosystem structure and processes, manage our land, resources and construction activities in a sustainable manner, and support cleanup and protection activities efficiently and effectively, all while leaving the smallest footprint behind.