ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA. A delegation from the Agência Nacional de Aguas (ANA), Brazil's national water agency, visited U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Headquarters and the Institute for Water Resources (IWR) on February 3, 2014.
ANA and USACE signed an agreement (“United States Army Corps of Engineers Capacity Building to Agencia Nacional De Aguas”) in early November 2013 to enter into a three-year capacity building agreement focused on: flood control (flood risk management), reservoir operations and management, regulation, and operation of national hydrologic networks. The first three tasks in the agreement will be performed by USACE; the last will be performed by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The visit is a component of the "regulatory aspects" task of the agreement. IWR will address the regulation task by writing a paper summarizing water allocation processes in the U.S. at interstate and intrastate levels. This paper will include lessons learned from the U.S. experience for ANA to consider as they look to improve water allocation processes in Brazil.