Quad-City Times: Update on Bargegate Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 07:11:44 -0700 Digging deeply By Barb Arland-Fye, QUAD-CITY TIMES -- April 30, 2000 You've got a 25,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the workings of the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers. The pieces are scattered everywhere. You bring in a bunch of politicians to put the puzzle together without a picture of what it is supposed to look like. They grab handfuls of pieces, go off to separate corners of the room and assume they can put the puzzle together without all of the pieces. That scenario might best illustrate the reason for delays in the outcome of at least five investigations of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its contentious, $54 million navigation study. Just 10 days ago, the federal Office of Special Counsel granted a two-month extension to the U.S. Department of Defense in its investigation of a whistleblower's accusations of illegalities in the 7-year-old navigation study. In February, the special counsel submitted the whistleblowing case against the Corps to the Secretary of Defense and requested a report in 60 days. The special counsel says there exists a substantial likelihood that Corps officials have engaged in violations of law, rules or regulations and a gross waste of funds. The Defense Department requested an extension until June 28 for a variety of reasons, said Jane McFarland, director of congressional and public affairs with the special counsel's office. She said the Defense Department cited the complexity of the study and a list of as many as 50 witnesses, some of whom also may be witnesses in a separate House Appropriations Committee investigation. There is plenty of duplication to go around. Here is a list of the investigations and hearings that have multiplied since accusations were first leveled against the Corps and the navigation study in February. The Corps of Engineers' internal review. Completed in March, the review found no improprieties in the study. But requests were made for some clarification and additional information, which has been provided, said Gary Loss of the Corps' Rock Island District. The U.S. Department of the Army Inspector General's review to the Office of Special Council. Due June 28. U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, conducted a Corps of Engineers budget hearing Feb. 24 in the Senate Subcommittee on Environment and Public Works. He expanded the hearing to address serious concerns about the objectivity of the navigation study's examination of costs and benefits to locks-and-dams improvements. He also requested a General Accounting Office report. The House Upper Mississippi River Caucus conducted an informal hearing March 9. Caucus members are congressmen representing states through which the river flows, including Iowa and Illinois. National Academy of Science report due in November. In addition, the Senate's Appropriations, Armed Services and Environment and Public Works committees have joined forces to probe inappropriate political influence concerning the Corps study and investigations of it, said Chris Brescia, the president of the Midwest Area River Coalition, or MARC, 2000. Its members include agricultural groups, the river industry, communities and business-oriented organizations such as the Quad-City Development Group. U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, also has asked the General Accounting Office to examine the navigation study, Grassley and U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, have asked the Food and Agricultural Research Institute to review it and U.S. Rep. Lane Evans, D-Ill., has asked for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to hold hearings, too. There is no denial that politics make the probes go 'round. "Everything we do is political," said Bill Tate, administrative assistant to U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa. "Our process, as cumbersome and slow-moving as it may be, is controlled conflict and, through that conflict of competing interests we try to arrive at a reasonable compromise," Tate added. "This is going to be, I'm afraid, a long, drawn-out affair." "We're trying to find out what happened and from that take something positive from it and make a clear-eyed decision about what to do about the locks and dams," Dennis King, Evans' chief of staff, said. That the study is getting so much attention, King added, is a tribute to the importance people place on the Corps' work and the value of the Upper Mississippi River. Gary Loss, the navigation study's project manager, said several people from the Corps' Rock Island District, which he also serves, have been interviewed by the House Appropriations Committee. Among them are Col. James V. Mudd, commander of the Rock Island District and the study's leader, Paul Soyke, the chief economist with the Rock Island District, and Ken Barr, chief environmental analyst with the Rock Island District. Loss estimates that as many as 20 people from Corps work groups in its Rock Island, St. Paul, St. Louis and New Orleans districts have been interviewed about the study. That typically involves two to three hours of interviewing in addition to time spent pulling background information for the interviews. "The study team in general has been sending volumes and volumes of information to the various investigation groups," Loss said. "Dave Tipple, the study's assistant project manager, has been spending a lot of time compiling these reports and sending them off. There's probably three or four places we've sent the same reports," Loss said. The information has been offered in compact disc form for use on computers, but the investigators often ask for hard copy. That is what they're getting -- a 12- to 15-inch thick pile of paper -- he said, adding, "A lot of the information is available on CD and on our Web page." Investigators have received reams and reams of data on fish mortality rates, backwater sedimentation and river traffic for the past 60 years, previous rehabilitation costs and projections for the future, he said. "In general, we're glad they're asking for these reports so they can get the real information about what's going on," he said, adding, "We wish we had a draft of the report so it would be all pulled together in a neat package." But the draft report, which Corps officials had hoped to produce for public airing this summer, will be delayed until this fall, because of the ongoing investigations, he said. The domino effect continues with the final recommendation, which was due to Corps headquarters in December. Loss' work continues on the draft study. "We've been working on the environmental, engineering, economics part of it. We've had some distractions with the investigations."The delays, he added, could impact the chances of navigation improvements being included in the Water Resources Development Act of 2000 and jeopardize the continuation of the Preliminary Engineering and Design funding for those improvements. The Corps received $5.4 million in 2000 to do some of the preliminary engineering and design work, Loss said. If Congress waits for the feasibility study before allowing preliminary engineering and design, "our ability to begin construction is several years in the future," he said. "If we can do it now, we'll have the ability to start construction sooner." NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for research and educational purposes. ___________________________________________________________ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For SC email list T-and-C, send: GET TERMS-AND-CONDITIONS.CURRENT to [log in to unmask]