Approved by the Energy, Environment, and Water Policy Committee on March 21, 2025 
Approved by the Public Policy and Practice Committee on June 4, 2025
Adopted by the Board of Direction on July 10, 2025

Policy

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recognizes the need for regional sediment management (RSM) for watershed and coastal zones to ensure ecosystem preservation and sustainable development. ASCE supports:

  • Managing sediments using regional sediment inventories and sediment budgets for sustainable inputs, movements, uses, and outputs.
  • Collaboration with stakeholders to mitigate adverse impacts on hydrogeomorphic processes and sediment regimes.
  • Resolving conflicts resulting over competing demands through stakeholder cooperation.
  • Establishing regional sediment management activities that focus on restoring natural sediment transport previously disrupted by unsustainable construction and practices.
  • Establishing property rights legal mechanisms needed for the allocation and transfer of sediment resources through collaboration. 
  • The partnering of governments, regulatory agencies, and private entities to effectively manage regional sediments.

Issue

Regional sediment management (RSM) is a project management approach that incorporates the principles of integrated watershed resources management and improved dredged material management. RSM recognizes sediment as a resource, and the need to consider projects and actions affecting sediment in a regional context.

Sediment movement and deposition on a regional scale are integral to the key hydrogeomorphic processes critical to ecosystem health associated with waterways and aquatic habitats. Long-term alterations of sediment regimes can significantly change modify critical habitat, stress ecosystem integrity and vitality, and cause regional-scale ecosystem collapse. Degraded ecosystem health translates into an increased risk to life and property, and as increased costs in addressing related social, economic, and environmental problems. Linking sediment management needs and opportunities can enhance the benefits of multiple projects and activities within a region, both economically and environmentally.

Rationale

RSM is critical for preserving and restoring wetlands and other ecosystems. It is also essential to restore and support the chemical, physical, and biological integrity and biodiversity of waters and associated aquatic habitats. RSM is integral in the effective implementation of the watershed approach to managing water resources. RSM integrates actions that affect erosion, transport, deposition, and sediment removal in a region. Knowledge of the sediment system in a region is essential for making local water resource project decisions and setting up longer-range management strategies. Effective implementation of RSM will restore vital hydrogeomorphic processes with related ecological and social benefits.

This policy has worldwide application 
ASCE Policy Statement 522 
First Approved in 2007