Star-Trib Editorial Praising Oberstar Editorial: Corps curriculum / Needed scrutiny for the engineers Star Tribune Published Oct 10, 2002 ED10 Over the past several decades, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to convert the Mississippi River into North America's premier freight waterway. Barge transit is an efficient way to move coal, fertilizer, gravel and other bulky commodities, and Midwestern farmers send as much as one-third of their grain down the Mississippi on its way to foreign markets. On balance, the taxpayers' investment has yielded huge dividends. Or has it? Three years ago, the Corps got caught cooking the books to justify a mammoth new upgrade of locks and dams on the Mississippi. The scandal cast doubt on the size of economic payoffs from Mississippi infrastructure and devastated the Corps' reputation for reliable research. This year Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., introduced a pair of sensible amendments that would bring greater accountability to Corps projects. Now leaders in the House are resorting to various procedural tricks to stymie the Oberstar amendments. But they should understand that taxpayers demand a higher level of accountability from the Corps today, and give Oberstar's amendments the vote they deserve. Corps officials have told Congress that they learned a lesson from the Mississippi embarrassment. But plainly they have not. The General Accounting Office recently found that in planning a new proj ect on the Delaware River, the Corps overstated the economic benefits by nearly a factor of three. The Portland Oregonian newspaper found shoddy arithmetic in the Corps' homework for a similar proj ect on the Columbia River. Oberstar would require the Corps to obtain outside peer review of its economic projections on major projects, and he would require the Corps to meet a higher standard on "mitigation" of the environmental damage caused by its projects. Oberstar is no hostile gadfly. He is one of Congress' top transportation authorities and long an admirer of the Corps. Washington's environmental community counted it a great victory when Oberstar offered his proposals as amendments to Congress' big water projects bill for 2002. Early this week, the House leadership tried to force a vote on the water bill without Oberstar's amendments, then backed down when he pointed out that they had promised him a hearing. Now it's rumored that House leaders will try to bring the bill back under a rule banning all amendments. They should quit the gamesmanship and make sure that the Corps gets the additional scrutiny it so plainly needs. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To get off the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to: [log in to unmask]