FORT IRWIN, Calif. (July 22, 2015) --From the lush, western banks of the Hudson River, some 50 miles north of New York City, two cadets from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at New York have elected to enjoy their summer in the high desert of Fort Irwin.
Cadets Addison Bieger and Marshall Kobylski, both senior civil engineering majors, are here with their faculty advisor, Col. Fred Meyer, deputy department head of West Point's department of civil and mechanical engineering. They are here to work with engineers from Fort Irwin's Directorate of Public Works and from the Los Angeles District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, to prepare a new storm water management plan for the garrison involving the design of storm runoff systems. The engineering projects will help prevent the kind of damage experienced during the storm, which hit Fort Irwin, Aug. 25, 2013.
The new management plan, designed to accommodate a 100-year storm, is replacing a previous storm water runoff management plan from over 35 years ago, which was designed to manage 25-50 year storms.
Bieger, who describes himself as an "Army brat," has lived on many Army posts throughout the United States, but not Fort Irwin. "This is the first time for me in the desert," Bieger said.
"Our academic studies have really helped us," Bieger said. "But it's a lot more challenging to adjust to real-life constraints. The terrain is a lot different, and we have to account for Fort Irwin's isolation, how to get certain materials out here, from a long distance away, and figuring out how we can best do that."
Kobylski, a native of Bowling Green, Ohio, has never been to an Army post outside of West Point. "It's really cool to see NTC [National Training Center] in general, how the Army works at large."
Kobylski said that their first job was to work with USACE and Fort Irwin engineers to prioritize a list of projects required as part of the storm water management plan. They are now designing the number-one priority projects - the repair and expansion of the North Tank Trail Channel, and creating new basins above the channel, which will serve to collect debris and water during a storm event. As an added benefit, water pooling in the basins during storms will help recharge the aquifer that supports Fort Irwin.
"Water and debris came down from the mountains from outside the cantonment area during the 2013 storm. Most of the damage came from there," Kobylski said. "The basins should catch most of the debris and slow the water down, so the flood channels can direct any excess water around the cantonment area."
Meyer said he is now crafting a memorandum of understanding between Fort Irwin and West Point to formalize the relationship between the post and the academy in hopes of bringing more teams of cadets and faculty members to the base.
"This is really a win-win situation, to have projects here on which cadets can work. It's beneficial to them in their development as engineers, or possibly other majors, and as future leaders. And they can learn about NTC in the process," Meyer said.
Meyer noted that as part of his NTC experience, Bieger observed a non-combatant evacuation operation to get a sense for the type of training that goes on here.
Marshall, who will be at NTC for a few more weeks, is taking part in the cadet troop leader training, or CTLT, program, working with a platoon leader from the 58th Engineer Company to learn what a platoon leader does in a regular Army unit. Meyer said that as an added benefit of being in this part of the country, he was taking his cadets to tour one of the world's greatest civil engineering feats, the Hoover Dam.
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