PA Aquatic Resource Restoration Conference 2026: Past, Present and Future

The Louisville Regulatory Division and the Water Resources Section, Hydrology and Hydraulics Branch has designed the Stream Resiliency and Sustainability Tool with the intention of equipping reviewers and designers with a consistent language to evaluate resiliency and long term sustainability with respect to stream restoration projects. The tool provides output based on stream restoration design parameters, which then informs risk based decisions regarding these principles of sustainability and resiliency (ability to independently maintain functions and services after being subjected to damage caused by ecological disturbances). The goal was to develop a tool without prescribing/specifying a specific design approach. With the cooperation of project sponsor’s, the U.S. Army Corps’ Pittsburgh Regulatory Division has deployed this tool across its tri-state area of responsibility and offers an evaluation of the tool’s effectiveness in the following: ability to identify and expedite projects that provide appropriate performance based mitigation for lost ecological functions and services, ability to screen projects with potential for re-design costs, and its ability to accurately assess what have proven to be both resilient/sustainable and unsustainable design philosophies and methodologies.