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Ecosystem restoration takes a big effort and big engineering

July 12th, 2012 by
 
One of the unsung agencies that is heavily involved in restoring coastal ecosystems just happens to be one of the biggest and most crucial – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
 
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their Ecosystem Restoration Program are heavily involved in planning, developing, and executing projects that restore damaged ecosystems and areas and provide environmental benefits to communities, including several projects in and around the Great Lakes.
 
From the U.S. Army website
“The USACE works to restore degraded ecosystems to a more natural condition through large-scale ecosystem restoration projects, such as the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration, Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration, Chesapeake Bay Oyster Recovery, Aransas National Wildlife Refuge Beneficial Use of Dredged Material (restoration of marsh critical to the endangered Whooping Crane), and Houston Ship Channel Beneficial Use of Dredged Material (marsh restoration in Galveston Bay), and by employing system-wide watershed approaches to problem solving and management for smaller ecosystem restoration projects.”
Read more about this terrific program and about the substantial work that goes into these projects at the article linked above.

Lake Zurich water resources planning report now available

June 12th, 2012 by
The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC), the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) all collaborated on a recently released report, “Recommendations for Integrated Water Resources Planning in Lake Zurich.”

The report combines study and information of a wide range of factors in order to provide appropriate recommendations for planning the community’s use of water. 

 
From the Metropolitan Planning Council’s website: 
 
This report is the culmination of one year of cooperative work, from March 2011 through March 2012, between the Village of Lake Zurich and a project team led by Metropolitan Planning Council in partnership with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. Through MPC’s Community Building Initiative, the team also convened a 13-member task force consisting of volunteer members with expertise in ecology, economics, engineering, law, planning, and utility management, to assist and advise the project team.”
 
The report not only provides information to water planners and local officials in Lake Zurich, but can be a model for other communities, laying out a variety of factors to consider and ways to meet the needs of customers while planning for the future. 
 
The complete report is available for download at the link above.
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