Costs Associated with Endangered Species Act Compliance

This technical note summarizes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE or the Corps) costs for complying with the Endangered Species Act (P.L. 93-205) (ESA) in carrying out navigation, flood risk reduction, and ecosystem restoration missions from Fiscal Years 2005 through 2010. The costs were report...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Henderson, Jim E
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology
COMPLIANCE
COSTS
Economics and Cost Analysis
ENDANGERED SPECIES
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT
Environmental Health and Safety
LEGISLATION
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This technical note summarizes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE or the Corps) costs for complying with the Endangered Species Act (P.L. 93-205) (ESA) in carrying out navigation, flood risk reduction, and ecosystem restoration missions from Fiscal Years 2005 through 2010. The costs were reported by USACE District, Division, and project personnel using the Costs Template for Threatened and Endangered Species Reporting (costs template) (Henderson 2012), developed under the Dredging Operations Technical Support (DOTS) program. The costs template is used by all Corps elements, e.g., hydropower, navigation, and recreation, to report annual ESA-related costs. Costs are reported for activities such as coordinating and consulting with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Costs are also described for measures implemented to protect or avoid threatened and endangered species (TES); measures such as equipment modification, infrastructure construction and operation, monitoring activities, and land acquisition. The ESA as amended in 1988 (PL 100-478), included a provision which required reporting expenditures reasonably attributable to a species beginning in 1990. This species by species accounting requirement became an annual data call to Federal agencies and states receiving section 6 grants in late autumn, reporting the previous fiscal year s (FY) costs to USFWS, who are responsible for compiling and reporting the results to Congress. Congress uses the information contained in the reports to either bolster claims for the effectiveness of the ESA in preventing species extinction or to denounce the costs of the ESA. Implementation of costs reporting, as one might suspect, varied between and within agencies. General guidance was provided by the USFWS each autumn and has been found to be open to interpretation (USFWS 2011).