Unfortunately, I cannot say I have had GOOD experiences with the army corp out here in Southern Virginia...I have delt with them more than I ever wanted to.

Took me almost a year to get my permitting in place to build a simple 1.5 acre farm pond. Actually, still getting it done...I'm dragging my feet at this point. Thread below got really long...bottom line we had to mitigate for all the stream we impacted.

My blow-by-blow experiences.


1.) Army corp cares nothing about structural integrity of the project...they are an arm of the EPA now...they are environmental police, at least in my area.

2.) My brother and I, who own the farm, have a ditch we were daming up...this ditch did not show up on any official USGS Topo surveys. The local NRCS guys said it would be a no-brainer to get a permit. They were wrong.

3.) The Army Corp environmentalist said we were "disrupting the waters of the United States" by daming up a ditch! At first they said we would have to pay about $470,000 to Uncle Sam to build our pond to compensate for the disruptions to the environment (this is twice as much as the value of the land!) There is a calculation of dollars per linear stream foot impacted by daming the ditch (the army corp classified my ditch as a ephemeral stream Water only runs when it rains.) My NRCS guy, who was FANTASTIC in helping us design the pond, spec the dam, lay out the water line, and test the dirt, politely asked what if "these boys" build the pond without telling you? The Army Corp person said she would find out and fine us $10,000/week for building an unpermitted dam! To add complete insult to injury, she reported this 40 plus year NRCS vet to her superiors and got him repremanded for insubordination.



4.) After a little more discussion, the army corp environmentalist said we could mitigate for the stream we impact. Mitigation involved setting aside, in perpetuity (ie. forever) "compensated land" for the land we were disrupting that would never be built on. We need to fence off the compensated land, take pictures, and put in our deed that we will never build on the compensated land. Now, the really interesting part is determining how much land we needed to compensate. At first, the EPA told me 10 to 1...in other words, we would need to block of 10 feet for every 1 foot we stream impacted beyond a threshold. Bottom line, this would have forced us to fence in most of the remaining "ditch streams" on the property. I politely blew up...and demaned the EPA get me the law...documenting EXACTLY WHERE it states this.

5.) In parallel, since I had a little lull at work, I contacted a few environmental consultants to figure out what the heck was happenning..and why it was so difficult to build a 1.5 acre farm pond that would be used to fish and water cattle! The guys I talked to said that during the Bush admin, the EPA won a power struggle with another group and wrestled the Army Corp to work under it. It had been beefed up in personnel to really go after developers...to make sure that big land developers were stymied or had to pay a LOT more for their projects. Even they were really surprised that they were going after my brother and I on a farm pond like this.

6.) We actually wrote our congressman at thst point, who just won an election, told our story, mentioned that these govt rules had stopped development on a pond that would bring development dollars into a depressed southern VA economy. The congressment actually replied back to us saying he would look into it. I doubt he did, but felt good to express dissatisfaction to somone.

8.) To really fight these guys, we would have had to take a grievence up their chain of command. Just not worth our time to do this.

7.) After finally figuring out that my brother and I were probably not planning on building a Wall Mart or subdivision of some kind on the farm, she relented and said we would only have to mitigate 1:1, which was somewhat reasonable to me. I am taking pictures this weekend to send to her so we can get our permit.

8.) My guess is your level of work/effort getting through the Army corp will be porportional to how vigiliant this person is on following what can be interpreted as onerous rules. Also, if you look like a developer...watch out. Some of the Army Corp people are much more reticent on following the letter of the law..there is a lot of room for judgement in the guideline.

Hope this helps. I have some official documentation if you care to look at it sometime.

John