 In 1998, the President of the United States created the American Heritage River Initiative to restore and revitalize rivers and waterfronts through the use of newly introduced soft engineering techniques.A report by Schneider reported that 47.2% of the U.S. and Canadian Detroit River had been fortified with concrete or steel, in accordance with traditional hard engineering management practices.In 1999, a U.S. Canadian SSE conference developed the best management practices for SSE use, which was put into effect among the 38 SSE projects that took place in the Detroit River-western Lake Erie watershed.