U.S. Army Corps of Engineers uses cooperative network to tap top talent for DoD environmental needs

Photo By James Frisinger | Dr. Jack Mobley, front, retired from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in March. His Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units work will be continued by Army teammates Zia Flossman, Kathy Mitchell and Charles McGregor.  

FORT WORTH, TX, UNITED STATES

05.11.2016

Story by James Frisinger 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District

FORT WORTH, Texas - Jack Mobley works out of cubicle on the third floor of the Lanham Federal Building in Fort Worth, Texas. If he cranes his neck, he can look out the window down at his occasional lunch spot, Bailey’s Bar-B-Que on Taylor Street.

But Mobley’s influence stretches from coast to coast for the Regional Environmental and Planning Center in the Fort Worth District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“I’m everywhere from Alaska to Guantanamo Bay to New York to Hawaii – and everywhere in between,” he said.

As the Fort Worth Center program manager for the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units Network, Mobley exemplifies the national impact the Fort Worth District RPEC has on preserving the nation’s natural heritage. Engagement with CESU was Mobley’s full-time assignment.

CESU is unique. It is a national consortium that brings together different layers of government, universities and nongovernmental organizations. It generates research, provides assistance and offers educational opportunities.

Mobley has been the nationwide point of contact for the Department of Defense, which is one of 15 member federal agencies using CESU. Mobley oversaw the CESU project formulation and award process to find the best civilian talent to execute its natural and cultural resources missions on military installations – and make wise use of taxpayer dollars to execute it.

“Jack is a program manager extraordinaire – but he’s also scientist, biologist and ecologist,” said Glenn Rhett, Mobley’s CESU counterpart at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. “It’s hard for me to imagine anyone other than Jack having the skill set necessary to manage a $30 million a year program like this which requires (on average) an award every two days for the entire year! Keeping his contracting and legal team members working together at this pace is a reflection on his own work ethic and their combined ability to perform under extreme time constraints.

“Our program is a third the size of Jack’s and we’re doing all we can to keep up with our 60 awards each year to meet sponsors’ needs,” said Rhett, who supports all Army Corps of Engineers districts that are able to use CESU on the civil works side.

DoD shifts strategy
Pentagon policy changed 20 years ago in response to a White House initiative requiring a comprehensive natural resources management approach. It focuses less on preserving individual listed or at-risk species or other single issues and more on preserving an entire ecosystem, said L. Peter Boice, deputy director for natural resources, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Energy, Installations and Environment). Within the CESU program, Mobley reports to Boice.

Mobley’s RPEC team works through CESU hubs called centers. Each center is hosted by a university, and covers a biogeographic region of the country. These centers tap into expertise from across the biological, physical, social, cultural and engineering disciplines. One center is hosted by the University of California-Berkeley. The Californian CESU Center has 26 area colleges and universities as active resource partners. It also maintains partnerships with nine other institutions and agencies, from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden to the San Diego Zoo.

With CESU, Mobley can put small teams to work through a competitive process toward an “assistance award.” It is a system of cooperative agreements. RPEC administers all DoD projects in the program.

For USACE civil works, CESU offers less flexibility than Mobley’s DoD military work, said Rhett. “On the civil works side, our authority limits us to research and development (R&D) studies alone; whereas, Mobley’s projects can address R&D and technical assistance and educational services,” he said.

In a civil works project, Corps District could partner with a CESU university to collect and evaluate data to assess the impacts from Corps water resource projects on critical ecological resources or threatened and endangered species. DoD’s CESU assistance could address these same R&D issues but also include subject matter expert assistance in reviewing project design and engineering specifications and in conducting training necessary to provide technology/information transfer to installations, said Rhett. These added options come through special authorities open to installations that aren’t available to civil works funded projects.

The advantages
The CESU program reduces costs to the federal government with its policy of not exceeding 17.5 percent overhead – about half of what typically was charged, said DoD’s Boice.

“Before, we were going to whomever could accept our money, and had the proper expertise. There was no bargaining power on our side as to the overhead rate we could charge,” he said. “The program also benefits by collaboration with other partners who want to see the same results, in the same region. If you work together, you can get a cost savings.”

The CESU Network is expanding that roster of potential partners. Boice said the State of Arizona recently joined the Desert Southwest CESU Center and the State of Florida has also expressed interest in participating – two big states with a lot of partnering opportunities.

“Jack has been instrumental in working ways to make sure the network is available to all who want to be a part of it in DoD,” said Boice.

Makua Military Reservation, U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii, may now be the single biggest user of CESU funding. It faces a tall environmental challenge – more than 40 endangered flora and fauna are within its borders.

Mobley said the DoD CESU program generates original research, all related to the military mission. In Hawaii it is helping an installation get fresh water. One research paper may be submitted for publication because the team discovered that groundwater perched over a volcano behaved in unexpected ways.

Mobley said it may seem counterintuitive, but CESU supports compliance with the Endangered Species Act and simultaneously expands the military’s ability to pursue its training mission.

“Most people think of it in terms of the military’s impact on endangered species,” he said. “It also goes the other direction – the impacts of endangered species on the military, preventing them from doing their job.

“What you try to do is minimize the impact of both so you can do what is necessary within the military mission but still protect the species. As a result, the military has an extremely high number of imperiled species found on military lands because we protect the lands.”

Past CESU projects at Fort Hood, through the Texas A&M CESU Center, expanded habitat suitable for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo. It reduced the conflict between training grounds and breeding grounds.

The program has grown dramatically. When the Fort Worth District took over the military work in FY2010, the DoD had awarded just $13 million in its first eight years with CESU. In the five years since, it did $179 million – 156 actions last year alone. DoD now has a 30 percent share of the $100 million annual CESU program among 15 federal agencies. USACE civil works side has a 10 percent share, or $10 million.

Navy uses CESU to help endangered species
The CESU Network has been a good fit for Kimberly O’Connor, a botanist who manages natural and cultural resources for Commander, Pacific Fleet. It helps her oversight mission for the Navy-owned San Clemente Island, which is part of Naval Base Coronado. The island, one of the Channel Islands off the southern California coast, provides a unique and critical training and testing location for the Navy.

Finding the best experts in the field, from both universities and nonprofits, had gotten harder and harder, said O’Connor, who works closely with Naval Base Coronado biologists to determine what projects are needed and devise statements of objectives. O’Connor and base staff collaborate with CESU partners to put work plans together.

“Collectively we define the best way to achieve the objectives, the best way to meet the requirements. For me it’s a far superior way of getting work done,” said O’Connor.

Maintaining the population of the San Clemente loggerhead shrike, a subspecies found only on the island, has been an ongoing challenge. The Institute for Wildlife Studies won a competition through the CESU Network to support recovery efforts. It combines monitoring with predator management and control. It also releases shrikes raised by the San Diego Zoo (under another CESU agreement for San Clemente Loggerhead Shrike Captive Breeding) into the wild to help recover the population.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provides important administrative support, she said. CESU also gives the Navy’s environmental program a lot of credibility, a reputation that reflects well on the USACE-CESU partnership.

CESU supports botanical research on San Clemente Island. It helps uncover the germination requirements of listed species, for example, some of which are helped by fires. Surveys can check to see if erosion control solutions were successful, or if more work is needed. CESU-assisted surveys can uncover an emerging habitat problem before it becomes a serious issue, said O’Connor.

Thanks to CESU, the Navy can undertake a more robust process to demonstrate the improved distribution and abundance of endangered species, which can be a long process.

“If we can make a case that they have made a dramatic recovery, then they can be down-listed or delisted,” said O’Connor. That’s a big plus for the Navy since it reduces the encumbrance to the military mission of where and when the service members can train. It would also free up environmental staff to focus management efforts elsewhere, including recovering other listed species, she said.

Note: Jack Mobley retired in March. Army teammates Zia Flossman, Kathy Mitchell and Charles McGregor will continue supporting the program.

• Date Taken: 05.11.2016
• Date Posted: 06.13.2016 11:44
• Story ID: 200870
• Location: FORT WORTH, TX, US