[youngtaff]

Why do the Army Corps of Engineers get so involved in civil infrastructure in the US - thinking of the Mississippi in particular?

In other countries the government would be involved but it would be a civilian rather than military role

[bumby]

Not sure about the exact thrust of your question but a few points:

- flood management is not easy to monetize so there is not much incentive for private industry. The timelines for design decisions (100 year, 500 year) often don’t mate well with private incentives

- it crosses many property boundaries which makes it hard to manage unless you have the rights of a government

- much of the work is still done by private companies but managed by the government, just like other infrastructure works like roads, bridges etc.

[DonHopkins]

Flood management in the Netherlands even influenced the country's style of government decision-making: the "Polder Model" of consensus-building.

The idea is that if everyone shares the same dikes and drainage systems, they have to cooperate regardless of political differences. A flood doesn't care whose land it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model

>The polder model (Dutch: poldermodel) is a method of consensus decision-making, based on the Dutch version of consensus-based economic and social policymaking in the 1980s and 1990s. It gets its name from the Dutch word (polder) for tracts of land enclosed by dikes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering

>The Maeslantkering 'Maeslant barrier' is a storm surge barrier on the Nieuwe Waterweg, in South Holland, Netherlands. It was constructed from 1991 to 1997. As part of the Delta Works, the barrier responds to water level predictions calculated by a centralized computer system called BOS. It automatically closes when Rotterdam, especially the Port of Rotterdam, is threatened with flooding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works

>The Delta Works (Dutch: Deltawerken) is a series of construction projects in the southwest of the Netherlands to protect a large area of land around the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta from the sea. Constructed between 1954 and 1997, the works consist of dams, sluices, locks, dykes, levees, and storm surge barriers located in the provinces of South Holland and Zeeland.

[macintux]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_En... has a good overview. Note that 97% of the employees are civilians.

[wbl]

The US did not have a civilian engineering school for a few decades after the founding. West Point was the only institution creating engineers. Given they had responsibility for port defenses the civil engineering of waterways was an easy addition.

[gsquaredxc]

There's some good answers here but something important is missed. Militaries spend a lot of time having soldiers shoot rounds down the range to ensure everyone is up to snuff. The engineering corps is similar but better. You can fund target practice for your army engineers by having them go build public infrastructure. It's a win for the military (practical experience), win for locals (public infrastructure), and a win for the taxpayer (two for one deal).

[bumby]

I don't think that idea necessarily holds for the Army Corps of Engineers. They technically work under a military command, but the vast bulk of the engineers are civilians. The military officers tend to rotate in and out of positions relatively fast. And the civilians aren't required to do construction in combat theaters (although voluntary positions do exist). So the idea that the USACE is set up to give practice for military theaters isn't really apt. It's more about the scope and incentives of the projects they work on. E.g., a private company doesn't have the right timeline or profit incentives to build dams for flood control.

[stevenwoo]

In addition to sibling comments for intent, the book Cadillac Desert documents how this government agency can be used to further moneyed interests, ie subsidize developments that would otherwise not be economically viable from local funding but become viable when federal taxpayer foots the bill. (The big examples in the book is building cities and farmland in deserts.)

[nxobject]

They're decentralized enough as well that some of their local offices have hilarious online presences. For example, Portland...

https://www.instagram.com/corpsofengineers_portland/