U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District Commander Col. Reinhard W. Koenig presented Allan Skinner with a certificate for 50 years of federal service today.
Skinner joined the Alaska District’s Permitting Section as an environmental protection specialist in 1974 after several years as a federal ranger for the National Park Service and the Corps of Engineers in the Lower 48. At that time, the Corps only regulated all work in navigable waters under Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899.
After the Clean Water Act was enacted in 1977, the Corps added responsibility for enforcing Section 404 which regulates the discharge of fill material in waters and wetlands. During his 38 years in Alaska, Skinner has seen the Alaska District’s regulatory staff grow from a seven-person section in the Operations Branch to a Regulatory Division with 40 plus people to handle the additional workload.
Wetlands cover nearly half of Alaska, over 170 million acres. The Regulatory Division receives more than 2,000 permit actions per year. The Regulatory Division has field offices in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Kenai and Sitka to help people throughout the state with regulatory processes.
“We recently digitized our Regulatory records,” said Bill Keller, chief of the North Branch of the Regulatory Division. “We ran Al’s name through the database and found 500 documents with his name mentioned 1,258 times. He is always focused on helping the customer.”
Release no. 12-004