LOS ANGELES — A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District project-delivery team has been named the USACE 2023 Outstanding Planning Achievement Team of the Year (Programmatic) after taking on the study of a nontraditional Tribal Partnership Program project using new guidance from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works.
The LA District’s Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Renewable Energy Project Tribal Partnership Team recently completed the study in coordination with tribal and federal partners, resulting in the recommendation from USACE to proceed on a project to install solar panels over about a 1,000-foot stretch of irrigation canal in central Arizona within the Gila River Indian Community Reservation in Maricopa and Pinal counties.
The purpose of the Corps study was to evaluate the technical and economic feasibility, and environmental acceptability, of the proposed project.
The Tribal Partnership Program, or TPP, gives USACE the ability to leverage its capabilities and resources to support and advance the interests of tribal communities in planning, studying, designing and constructing water resources development projects. Typical examples of these activities include projects for flood damage reduction, environmental restoration and protection, and preservation of cultural and natural resources; watershed assessments and planning activities.
The Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Renewable Energy Project, however, is distinct in that it falls under the category of nontraditional water resources development projects. The guidelines for USACE to implement TPP more broadly were provided in a November 2022 memorandum from Michael Connor, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works.
“The guidance on how we implement the Tribal Partnership Program is part of how the Army is modernizing civil works,” said Danielle Storey, the LA District’s tribal liaison and TPP program manager. “They gave the guidance that it can qualify as a USACE project if it’s attached to a water resource and is in USACE’s core competencies. So, the connection was there, and that got approved.”
For a TPP project, “this determination of feasibility includes that the project is technically feasible; the economic, environmental and social benefits to the tribal nation outweigh the costs; the project is cost-effective; and the project is environmentally acceptable,” Connor said in the November 2022 memo to the USACE commander. “The primary driver in the implementation consideration is whether the project will substantially benefit Indian tribes.”
Storey said she and her PDT worked closely with division and headquarters, as well as those updating the TPP implementation guidance, as they were conducting the study to determine the project’s feasibility.
“This was the test case, and the questions that came up as we were going through this got put into that guidance,” she said. “Many of the decisions that we made as a team on how we should proceed have now been codified in the TPP guidance.”
On Nov. 9, less than a year after initiating the study, LA District commander Col. Andrew Baker joined Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Roe Lewis to sign a project partnership agreement at the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona. Connor traveled from Washington to commemorate the event.
“The community expects this first phase of the project to be completed in 2025 and hopes to launch the second phase as soon as December of this year,” Connor said in a written statement.
Once the project starts, it will be the first LA District Tribal Partnership Program project to reach active construction.
“The stellar work done by this team literally charted a new path in the Tribal Partnership Program, test drove a new policy from the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, and demonstrated the Corps’ capabilities in nontraditional projects,” said David Hibner, South Pacific Division programs director, in his nomination packet for the team. “A first of its kind in the United States, this study had visibility at the highest levels of Army leadership, and the team magnificently rose to the exceptional challenges encountered at every step of the way.”
Storey said the team’s accomplishment would not have been possible without the strong vertical coordination within USACE, the quick work with federal agency partners like the Bureau of Reclamation, and the close collaboration and responsiveness of the tribal sponsor.
“We relied heavily on our tribal partner — as it should be,” Storey said. “They’re knowledgeable about their irrigation canals because they built them. They were a great resource for providing everything we needed to move it through as quickly as possible.”