When the rain falls or snow melts, the rivers rise. For the engineers who study water, there is no panic—just a quiet team of professionals, carefully studying the flow, ensuring that the water stays where it’s needed most. They are problem-solvers, innovators and experts of water resources. Through their work, they ensure that no matter how unpredictable the weather, local communities are as prepared as possible.
While the work of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hydraulic engineers might not make the front page of the newspaper, it is a constant presence in the background, quietly keeping communities safe and thriving. The Kansas City District knows the importance of keeping an eye on water better than most, having suffered extensive flooding in 1993, 2011 and 2019.
To truly grasp the importance of the H&H section, it’s essential to understand the two branches of science it covers: hydrology and hydraulics.
"Hydrology is the study of the water cycle like you learned in elementary school," said Dane Morris, chief of the Hydrology & Hydraulics section. “We focus on where the water is coming from, how much of it falls in a given area at any one time and what that water does once it hits a surface.”
Erin Reinkemeyer, a hydraulic engineer with H&H, adds, "And then hydraulics comes into play, which is the physics of how water moves, fluid dynamics and fluid mechanics. Once that water reaches a project site, we're focused on how it's going to flow, how it's going to impact our site and how to design the project to deal with it.”
For the H&H section, water is more than a liquid that flows downstream. There are many factors—terrain, soil composition, weather events and man-made structures—that all affect how water behaves. Hydraulic engineers analyze and predict how water will move through a space, and from there they help design solutions to manage those water flows.
The work of H&H is vital to USACE’s ability to respond to a wide array of engineering challenges. Whether it's determining levee height for flood protection or managing wetland ecosystem restoration projects in rivers, water is at the core of most USACE projects.
“Any major mission area we have in the district, we play a role at one time or another because water is a key component of almost every project we have,” said Morris.
This focus is especially important to the Kansas City area and surrounding region. Flood management is a key component of the Kansas City District’s work, particularly given the region’s geography. Both the Missouri and the Kansas rivers and their tributaries can quickly swell after heavy rains, and when the rivers meet in the heart of Kansas City, flooding puts thousands of people and billions of dollars of assets and property at risk.
“With levee design, we’re the ones responsible for determining how high a levee will be built and where the levee will actually be placed,” said Reinkemeyer. She added the Kansas City District H&H engineers also conduct computer mapping and modeling of potential flood events, as well as inspections, assessments and safety evaluations of USACE dams and reservoirs nationwide.
The scale of the H&H section’s work is enormous, spanning vast watersheds like the Missouri River basin, which covers more than 500,000 square miles. The sheer size and complexity of the projects, especially those in large watersheds, can feel overwhelming. Yet many of the H&H section’s engineers choose to work for USACE precisely because of that challenging scope.
“Everyone that works in H&H has a passion for water resources because you don't get to do this type of work anywhere else,” said Morris. “The scale of the projects, the scope of the projects, the impact that you have on communities, the environment and the region. You're not going to do that anywhere else. That’s why we get the best water resource engineers around, because this really is the peak.”
Morris emphasized that while the scale of projects often presents technical challenges, USACE engineers can reach across not only district lines for assistance, but also engage with multiple state and local partners who share the workload.
“There’s a really great, collaborative H&H community that goes beyond [USACE] and we’ve built a lot of mutually beneficial relationships with our partners,” said Morris.
Depending on the project, H&H engineers will work with transportation and conservation agencies simultaneously across multiple states, and partner with a diverse array of federal agencies such as the United States Geological Survey, National Weather Service and Bureau of Reclamation.
"Together we’ve all been working on the Missouri River Basin for over a hundred years," he said. "We have a lot of institutional knowledge on how the system works, and what makes it tick—or break."
While the H&H team are all civil engineers, their paths to USACE H&H were just as fluid as the waters they study.
“I actually originally got a zoology undergraduate degree,” said Morris. “When I went into environmental engineering, I was really focused on stream restoration and open channel
flow, so in my master’s thesis I used USACE software, the HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System) that is really the leading software in hydraulic modeling. That was my introduction to [USACE].”
Many in H&H started their careers in other fields, whether it be agriculture engineering, bioengineering and even wastewater treatment design. Yet Morris said that because water weaves through so many engineering disciplines, as long as they are interested in water, USACE will have need of their talents.
Ultimately, their work—whether designing flood management systems, restoring ecosystems or managing river flow—directly impacts the safety, economy and well-being of the communities they serve.
“Everything we do comes down to impact,” said Reinkemeyer. “I think we have people doing this type of work because everything we do is to help others. Whether that's flood risk, improving ecosystem or looking at life safety from the dam safety and levee safety risks. It’s all coming down to just wanting to make a difference and to help people out where we can. We just do it in a nerdy way.”
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