USACE planners nationally recognized for project study

The Army Corps’ New York District Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point (FIMP) Project Delivery Team (PDT) has received the Corps’ National Outstanding Planning Achievement Team Award (Enterprise) for fiscal year 2020 ─ recognizing exceptional team efforts on specifically-authorized feasibility studies and executing the Army Corps’ civil works mission. The team was one of only two recognized throughout the U.S.

The team’s innovative approaches to water-resource planning and inter-agency collaboration resulted in the completion of a nearly four-decade planning effort and approval of a Chief of Engineer’s Report in July 2020 for the FIMP Coastal Storm Risk Management Reformulation Study – an updated version that captures current science and engineering.

Team members are now completing pre-construction engineering and design (PED) to support construction expected to begin this fall. The $1.5 billion project is designed to reduce flood risk from severe storms and tidal surges along 83 miles of coastline (barrier beaches and low-lying mainland communities) on the south shore of New York’s Long Island east of New York City. This area has experienced repeated erosion from severe storms, the most serious in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy eroded nearly 40 percent of beach sediment in some areas.

New York District Commander Col. Matthew Luzzatto commented: “The team exhibited great tenacity, sensitivity and respect through its collaboration with the Department of the Interior and other state and federal agencies to achieve agreement on a very complex study. It turned what could have been a constraint into an opportunity to build trust and improve the project.”

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