To : Sierra Clubs - Corps Reform Listserve
Chapter and RCC Conservation Chair listserve
Iowa Topics Listserve
From: Debbie Neustadt, Sierra Club, Chair Corps Reform Task Force
Des Moines, IA
I have been deeply involved in this issue for a long time and have
refrained from posting. With the Washington Post article today this
seems to be the time to start getting as many people in the Sierra Club
involved as possible. I will continue to make postings on this issue as
the Senate debates the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA). Right
now WRDA is in the Senates' Environment and Public Works committee.
From Tim Eder, NWF
As the article below in today's Washington Post makes clear, a huge
debate with major implications for the future of the Corps' water
program is brewing in the Senate. If Congress and the Corps are able to
move forward on this Corps project - the justification for which has
been rejected by two panels of the National Academy of Sciences - it
will set back Corps reform efforts. This proposal - if it is approved -
will perpetuate the unholy alliance between Congress and the Corps of
moving forward with unjustifiable water projects at huge taxpayer
expense.
You can help by letting your Senator know that he/she should not
support the proposal to expand the Upper Mississippi locks. Let them
know that any Water Resources Development Act must include meaningful
measures to reform the Corps, including requirements for the Corps to
modernize by updating its planning rules, requirements that costly or
controversial projects be reviewed by independent experts, and
requirements that the Corps mitigate fully for any unavoidable damage
its projects or activities cause to habitat.
The Upper Mississippi locks proposal is a classic "poster child" for
the need to reform the Corps of Engineers. The lock extension project is
strongly opposed by national and regional conservation groups, because
it would continue the degradation of the river and not provide adequate
assurances and funding for a badly needed restoration program. Instead,
the Corps should install lower cost small scale measures like traffic
scheduling and helper boats to speed barge traffic through the locks.
Additional information on the bill and the Corps Upper Mississippi
project can be found on American Rivers web site:
http://www.amrivers.org/riverconservation.html
Washington Post
Navigation Project Might Go to Senate
Goal Is to Ease Traffic on Rivers
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 7, 2004; Page A12
A proposal to have the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertake a $3.1
billion construction and restoration project on the upper Mississippi
and Illinois rivers is poised for action in the Senate even though it
has come under repeated attack from environmental, taxpayer and academic
groups -- as well as some administration officials -- as costly and
unnecessary.
Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), who chairs the subcommittee on
transportation and infrastructure, and other midwestern senators are
trying to write the plan into a broader water project authorization bill
this month, the first time it has been formally proposed. Bond said he
hopes to move the bill through the Environment and Public Works
Committee before the July 4 recess, though a senior GOP aide said it was
hard to predict whether the bill would pass before the Senate's fall
adjournment.
The proposal, which would be the most expensive navigation project in
U.S. history, has bipartisan support from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and
others, as well as the backing of agricultural producers and barge
operators. But the White House has yet to endorse the plan, and some
senators have vowed to fight it.
The Corps will begin holding public hearings on the project next week,
and its officials said they will hold off on a recommendation on
construction until they solicit more public comment. But Bond is not
waiting for the Corps, saying, "It's time Congress chose to chart the
future based on the information we have."
Bond's bill, which is similar to the Corps' pending plan, would include
$1.46 billion for ecosystem restoration along the rivers and would draw
about $850 million from a trust fund supported by a tax on barge
operators. It differs in not calling for doubling the size of five
600-foot locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers.
Bond's initiative marks the latest chapter in a battle between the
Corps and its critics. The agency has spent the past few years defending
itself against criticism that it manipulated data to justify ambitious
projects on the nation's rivers.
After more than a decade of studies costing $70 million, the Corps
described the $1.4 billion construction of seven locks, with the option
to expand five more, as the "preferred alternative" for reducing river
traffic congestion on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers. Locks
operate as a sort of staircase on the river, raising or lowering vessels
so they can meet the river's level as they move upstream or downstream;
delays at each lock can last several hours.
"We don't think you can afford to stand still, given that traffic will
increase and delays will increase," said Richard Worthington, a senior
policy analyst at the Corps. "We recognize there's uncertainty. But
there's a great risk in doing nothing."
Bond said the project to remake the 70-year-old lock system is "vitally
important to farmers in Missouri and the Midwest. If we don't have good
river transportation, particularly when Brazil and other countries are
building up their systems, we're going to lose out on a good portion of
a $60 billion export market for agricultural products."
The Agriculture Department's Agricultural Marketing Service has
endorsed the plan, praising the Corps for working "to provide a modern,
efficient and more competitive transportation system for grain exports."
But several independent groups question whether the government should
invest so heavily in a navigation project when traffic on the
Mississippi has been declining. According to Corps statistics, barge
traffic at Lock 25, one of the busiest on the river just north of St.
Louis, declined 23 percent between 1992 and 2003. This year it has
dropped 19 percent.
"If you're going to justify some new locks, you have to have some
increase in traffic," said Lester B. Lave, an economics professor at
Carnegie Mellon University who studied the project for the National
Academy of Sciences. He said it "takes time" to determine whether the
project is justified, adding, "Apparently Senator Bond is impatient."
Debate over the project has raged for years. The Corps asked economist
Donald C. Sweeney II, to study the plan in 1993; when he concluded five
years later that the $1 billion cost of the proposed project would far
outweigh its benefits, Corps leaders yanked the study away from him,
replaced him with an engineer and continued to push for lock expansion.
Sweeney filed for whistle-blower protection, and a U.S. Army inspector
general report later concluded "one of the key parameters was
manipulated to result in a specific study outcome."
Two National Academy of Sciences studies over the past four years, as
well as the president's Office of Management and Budget, have questioned
the methods of analysis used by the Corps of Engineers. The Corps wrote
in April that with enough maintenance, "the navigation structures on the
system could keep functional for the next 50 years."
Even Corps officials have raised questions about the data underlying
the plan, according to internal correspondence obtained by The
Washington Post. Arlene Dietz, director of the Navigation Data Center at
the Corps' Institute for Water Resources in Alexandria, sent an e-mail
May 14 to her colleagues in which she questioned whether the locks'
capacity had been adequately studied in light of industry complaints
about congestion and delays.
"My Greatest Concern is twofold, first we have not adequately evaluated
the accuracy, completeness and consistency of the data, and second, our
analysts have not been able to spend sufficient time evaluating the
trends and relationships," she wrote.
Scott Faber, a water resources specialist at the advocacy group
Environmental Defense, said the project "is not only a referendum on the
Mississippi, it's a referendum on whether the Corps has to conduct
credible studies. . . . If they can cheat here, they can cheat
anywhere."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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