Advancing Climate and Sustainability Solutions Within Federal Government: Martin Doyle, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Army for Civil Works

Martin Doyle is among the leading academic experts on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, “the nation’s engineers” who build and maintain dams, reservoirs and other major water infrastructure projects.

“I am the nerd of nerds on the Corps of Engineers, and yet I fundamentally did not understand the Corps until I actually worked with them,” said Doyle, director of the water policy program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and a professor of river science and policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment.

Beginning in spring 2023, Doyle served for more than a year as a senior advisor on water resources to Michael Connor, assistant secretary of the U.S. Army for civil works. The assistant secretary’s office provides civilian oversight of the Corps.

Martin Doyle

One of the main functions of the office is to translate the current administration’s policy ambitions to the Corps’ on-the-ground practices. During Doyle’s time there, one of the Biden administration’s priorities was nature-based solutions—actions to protect, sustainably manage or restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges. While change will come gradually, the office is helping the Corps think through how nature-based solutions could best be incorporated into its critical flood control mission.

The office also acts as the liaison between the Corps and Congress. A big part of that work is implementing the biannual Water Resources Development Act, a massive legislative package that authorizes projects to improve the nation’s water resources.

Then there are what Doyle calls the “sticky wicket” projects.

“The assistant secretary’s office gets involved when there's something that is not straightforward,” he said. “That means either leaning into a particular project to get it over the finish line or making sure that certain communities are heard.”

Doyle was assigned one such project located in his native Mississippi. The Pearl River runs right through the heart of the state’s capital, Jackson. In 2022, a historic flood displaced hundreds of people from their homes, inundated local businesses, and devastated critical infrastructure, including the city’s drinking water utility.

The Corps’ project is intended to mitigate the flood risk and allow some security for the city and communities. But as Doyle describes it, the project has some “hard hydrology, hard hydraulics, hard mitigation.” That required the additional high-level support that he brought from the assistant secretary’s office to help the Corps’ district office make key decisions more quickly.

Doyle often heard that his perspective as an outsider was helpful to the office. He says his value was often about who he could bring to the table through relationships developed over years of working on water infrastructure projects that tend to be more local than federal in nature.

“When something would come up that had to do with drinking water or wastewater, that tends to be outside the purview of the Corps,” he said. “I was able to say, ‘Well, this group or this person is easy to work with on this.’”

Doyle’s presence also gave the office enough bandwidth to address nuanced issues that might not have gotten attention otherwise. For example, Connor gave Doyle space to invest time in the Corps’ practices related to mitigation banking, a subject he has researched for years.

This wasn’t Doyle’s first time serving temporarily in a federal agency. Nearly a decade ago, he spent a year working on water infrastructure financing with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at the Department of the Interior.

Doyle said the experiences have enriched his understanding of federal water management and interactions among agencies, shifting his approach to teaching Duke students as well as his research priorities.

“Every time I do one of these, my research agenda changes for the next five years,” he said.