How the Army Corps of Engineers Stays in Business

It comes up with loony projects, has them embraced by pork-loving congress critters, develops phony economic benefits analysis, and then plays hardball, using people like Pennsylvania’s amoral governor as its cheerleaders. Michael Grunwald wrote a brilliant 5-piece series for the Washington Post back in 2000 chronicling how, in one Corps survey, the Chessie ran east to west, while in another, it ran west to east, as it tried to ‘justify’ two separate ‘economic development’ projects.

It is an agency that runs largely outside of the purview of the traditional checks and balances.  Here, Grunwald gives you the inside skinny on this rogue agency:

In 2000, the Army Corps of Engineers was caught red-handed concocting its justification before launching a $1 billion project on the upper Mississippi River system. After the scandal died down, the corps admitted there wasn’t really enough barge traffic to justify construction — but proposed a $4 billion project, because there was a remote possibility things might change someday. And yes, the project recently sailed through a united Congress, where water projects are a time-honored form of political currency that steer jobs and money to the constituents and contributors of powerful members.

By corps standards, pouring thousands of tons of concrete into the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers to relieve nonexistent barge congestion with seven new locks is no environmental disaster; those rivers are already highly engineered and degraded. But it is a stark example of the dysfunction of the corps — its dishonest analyses, anachronistic priorities, predilection for makework, and desperation to please its congressional patrons and special-interest clients. And that dysfunction is itself an environmental disaster — not only because some of the porky boondoggles it produces destroy pristine rivers and enormous swaths of wetlands, but because an honest corps with better priorities could help revive America’s ravaged ecosystems.

Here is how they get away with it:

Corps boondoggles thrive because they provide benefits to a few — in this case, barge interests, farm interests, and unions (and, in our case, the oil refineries) — at the expense of the many. You pay for this foolishness, but you probably won’t come to Washington to fight it. There are a few corps reformers on the Hill, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and especially Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), but most members of Congress consider it bad form to oppose another member’s water project. Usually, the strongest voices in opposition are environmentalists. And the corps devised a brilliant strategy for dealing with them on the upper Mississippi: It bought them off.

While the Bush Administration had some success limiting some of the boondoggles through the budgetary process, most skate through. One can only hope that the Obama Administration will apply the kind of skeptical standards that this agency’s misadventures call for. And even then, the Congress critters have final say.

I beg you to read Grunwald’s article and then seek out additional information, especially about how the Corps is largely responsible for the devastation post-Katrina, and its Everglades projects. Once you have, you will understand the arrogance/incompetence of an agency that has given the middle finger salute to Delaware and New Jersey. This is an important issue, both environmentally and politically. It will test the mettle of elected officials from our Congressional delegation to both the Governor’s and AG’s offices.

Find out what we’re up against here.