All approved dredging projects must follow the requirements and conditions of their permits. Permit conditions are based on project and environmental considerations and are based in a number of federal statutes, including the Clean Water Act and the Ocean Dumping Act. Non-compliance with permit conditions by applicants is taken seriously by the Regulatory Division and may lead to administrative and legal action. The Regulatory disposal compliance program employs state-of-the-art techniques to monitor disposal compliance with minimal intrusion in operational activities.

In the past, compliance was monitored by a dedicated group of Corps-certified, private contractors who rode each disposal scow and monitored disposal activities.  Since January 1, 2009, the Disposal Inspector Program has been replaced by an automated monitoring system, the Disposal Quality Management System (DQM).

Dredging Quality Management System (DQM)

The DQM Program (formerly called the Silent Inspector Program) is an automated dredge monitoring system comprised of both hardware and software developed by the Corps). The program was developed as a low-cost, repeatable, impartial system for automated dredge monitoring. At the heart of the DQM program are the Corps-supplied software and data management protocol and the contractor-supplied hardware. The program depends on fully-calibrated hardware producing accurate data streams that can be used to evaluate full compliance of disposal activities. To this end, the DQM USACE Support Center has developed a program that will send Corps contractors to calibrate and certify all disposal scow instrumentation on-site to bring it into DQM compliance. To learn more about the National Dredging Quality Management Program, click here: http://dqm.usace.army.mil.