CORPS GETS NEW RESIDENT MANAGER IN CAPE

A New Hamburg native is the new resident manager of the Corps of Engineers-St. Louis District Lower Mississippi River Valley resident office at Cape Girardeau.

Charles Grojean, 51, replaces former resident manager Bill Busch of Cape Girardeau, who retired last August.

Grojean has worked for the Corps of Engineers since 1966. Prior to that he served in the Navy, and was a construction inspector with District 10 of the Missouri Highway and Transportation Department at Sikeston.

While assigned to the Cape Girardeau office from 1966 to 1974, Grojean worked as a construction inspector. From 1969 to 1971, Grojean was assigned to the U.S. Postal Construction Program, where he supervised the construction of a post office at Carbondale, Ill., and a regional mail-processing center in Hazelwood in northwest St. Louis County.

In 1974, Grojean was assigned project manager of the Corps' Elsberry project office. There, he supervised maintenance and inspection of Lock and Dams 24, 25, 26, and 27 between St. Louis and Hannibal.

It was during that time that Grojean was also involved in three prototype projects for the Corps' Environmental Management Program.

Grojean said: "What we did was take Corps-owned wetlands in the vicinity of our locks and dams along the Mississippi River above St. Louis and turn them into wildlife, fish and waterfowl habitats, in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Missouri Department of Conservation,. One of the habitat areas near Clarksville is also used for hunting and fishing, but the other two are strictly wildlife refuges."

In 1991, Grojean returned to Cape Girardeau to assist Busch in the Cape LaCroix Creek-Walker branch flood-control project and other local projects.

While in Cape Girardeau Grojean received the Corps' 1992 Hard Hat of the Year Award for the Lower Mississippi River Valley Division, which consists of the St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans districts. Only 12 such awards are given worldwide by the Corps of Engineers each year at its headquarters in Washington.

As resident manager of the Cape Girardeau office, which is in the Federal Building, Grojean is responsible for:

-- Construction management oversight of all the Corps' civil works projects along the Mississippi River -- from Cairo to St. Louis, including wing dike and rock revetments construction and maintenance, and the Cape LaCroix-Walker branch flood-control project at Cape Girardeau.

-- Levee inspections and repairs along the Mississippi River from Cape Girardeau to Ste. Genevieve and from East Cape Girardeau, Ill. north to Valmeyer, Ill.

-- Major repairs to Corps' facilities at Lake Wappapello.

Grojean is a graduate of Kelley High School near Benton and is a certified civil engineering technician from the Institute for Certification of Engineering Technicians in Washington.

He and his wife Mary now live in Kelso.