When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) takes on infrastructure projects, they are usually on a massive scale. So when the Corps’ Portland District decided to make a 2023 calendar, it stayed true to form: choosing "giant" cats that they photoshopped next to 12 of the department’s “pet projects.”
“We wanted to make something that people can enjoy and also get a little bit of Education in a fun way about some of the projects that we do,” says Chris Gaylord, public affairs specialist for USACE Portland, which operates locks and dams along the Columbia River, operates dams in the Willamette Valley for flood risk management, maintains Oregon's coastal rivers for navigation and leads the nation in hydropower generation. “Even if it's just a picture of a cat in the mouth of a Columbia River with an excavator, people now know that we build, maintain and rehabilitate things like jetties.”