Unique History of Partnership in Water Management

As part of a combined effort by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Civil Works Directorate, USACE Office of History, and the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat, a joint history of water resources development by the USACE and Rijkswaterstaat has just been published. 

In recognition of the book’s release, Ms Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, hosted a visit by Ambassador Rudolf Simon Bekink, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United States.

During this 24 February visit, Ms Darcy presented a copy of the history, Two Centuries of Experience in Water Resources Management, to Ambassador Bekink that included inscriptions by Ms Darcy and the Director General of the Rijkswaterstaat, Mr Jan-Hendrik Dronkers.

This remarkable historical perspective was produced as one activity under a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) between the Rijkswaterstaat and USACE.

The book was publicly released in celebration of 10-years of productive and successful collaboration under the MoA at the annual MoA Steering Committee meeting held in November 2014 in Delft, Netherlands.

The book describes a fascinating and somewhat parallel history of these two premier water resources organizations over the past 200-years. Of special note, this is the first book to recount the history of the Corps’s Civil Works program from its inception.

Production was supported by members of USACE’s Institute for Water Resources (IWR) and the USACE Office of History.