HISTORY: Regional Environmental Offices precede AFCEE

  • Published
  • By Jennifer Schneider
  • AFCEE Public Affairs
LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  The Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment celebrates its 20-year anniversary on July 23, but its roots go much deeper into Air Force history than that, tracing back to the origins of the Air Force itself.

When the Air Force became a separate military branch in 1947, it was dependent on the Army and Navy for facility design and military construction support. The Air Force established liaison offices, known as Air Force Installation Representatives, which were collocated with the Army Corps of Engineers division offices. By 1951, there were 10 AFIRs located in Boston; New York; Atlanta; Cincinnati; Omaha, Neb.; Dallas; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Anchorage, Alaska; and one overseas in Casablanca, Morocco.

The AFIRs became known as the Air Force Regional Civil Engineer offices in 1959. The offices served as the interface between the construction agents and the Air Force units and agencies that established facility requirements, criteria and standards.

Consolidations in the late 1960s led to a merging of existing U.S. AFRCEs into three large offices located in Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco. Soon after, in the early 1970s, the three AFRCEs took on a new role, assisting the Air Force in complying with state and federal environmental laws and regulations.

The mission of the AFRCEs was expanded by Maj. Gen. William Gilbert, Air Force deputy director of Engineering and Services, in his policy letter dated April 12, 1977.

The "12 April Letter," as it became known, established the Air Force Interagency/Intergovernmental Coordination of Land, Facility and Environmental Plans, Programs and Projects and established a major new role for the AFRCEs.
 
A new Environmental Planning Division was created in each of the three AFRCEs and assigned broad responsibilities for establishing ongoing communication with the regional offices of federal agencies, for example the Environmental Protection Agency, and the states. In accordance with the "12 April Letter," the AFRCEs became the Air Force's focal points for dealing with outside agencies at the regional and state levels. IICEP was the vision of Gary Vest, then senior community planner at Air Staff.

The new divisions were staffed and became fully operational in late 1977. An early goal for the offices was to support the Air Force Air Installation Compatible Use Zone Program by helping installations work with federal, state and local planners to implement AICUZ recommendations for compatible land use around military airfields.

The AFRCEs also undertook a major initiative to develop formal Memoranda of Understanding with the states to promote a two-way exchange of information on construction projects and other major activities.

The environmental planning divisions were given a new tasking in 1978 when President Carter signed Executive Order 12088 which required federal agencies to comply with the same environmental requirements as anyone else.

For the AFRCEs, this meant that military construction and other construction programs were required to obtain all applicable federal, state and local environmental construction permits. The Environmental Planning divisions responded by creating the MILCON Environmental Permitting Handbook, a tool for integrating the permitting process with the standard MILCON design schedule.

The continuing growth in environmental regulations, especially by the states, required the AFRCEs to expand the existing IICEP mission to include greater engagement with the EPA regions and state environmental regulators. This was especially true when the Air Force fielded its Installation Restoration Program in the mid-1980s. The existing relationships that had been created by the Environmental Planning divisions were quickly adapted to support the IRP, bringing the expertise of EPA and state regulators into the IRP process.

The community planning strength of the AFRCEs continued to be a major asset even with the rapidly expanding environmental quality workload. During the early 1980s, the AFRCEs took on the responsibility for implementing a new Air Force base planning initiative, the Planning Assistance Team Program. This was an Air Force adaptation of a civilian program sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, which assembled a team of planning and design professionals to conduct an intensive study of a significant local planning issue.

The PAT Program used a five- to eight-person team of Air Force planners, architects and engineers, recruited by the AFRCE, to do a five-day study of an Air Force installation. An AFRCE representative participated on each team as either a team chair or team member. During the 1980s, the AFRCEs conducted over 75 PAT studies, both at stateside and overseas installations.

A major reorganization of Air Force Civil Engineering was set in motion in the late 1980s that ultimately resulted in the reassignment of most AFRCE design management responsibilities to the major commands. As the drawdown of the AFRCEs began, Maj. Gen. Joseph Ahearn, the Air Force Civil Engineer, announced his decision to keep the Environmental Planning divisions in place.

On Sept. 1, 1990, General Ahearn re-designated the Environmental Planning divisions as the Air Force Regional Environmental Offices and established them as field offices of the Air Force Environmental Division. The REOs remained under Air Staff until July 1991 when they were re-assigned to the newly created Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence.

To this day, AFCEE's REOs continue to serve as advocates for the Air Force before local, state, regional and federal authorities and regulators.

(Thomas Sims, director of the AFCEE Regional Environmental Office in Atlanta, and Thomas Manning, director of the AFCEE Regional Environmental Office in Dallas, contributed historical background information for this article. This is one of a series of articles as AFCEE prepares to celebrate its 20th Anniversary)