A Chance to Reshape the Corps (of Engineers)

The New York Times ^ | 03/18/2002 | The editors

[Pokey78]

President Bush may have done more than he knows to start a process of reform in the hitherto untouchable Army Corps of Engineers — an agency famous for its servility to Congress and its indifference to presidents. Earlier this month, Mr. Bush forced the resignation of the agency's civilian chief, Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman he had appointed only months before as a favor to Trent Lott, the Senate minority leader. Mr. Parker's main sin was that he asked Congress for more money than Mr. Bush had budgeted. This did not bother Congress in the least, since most members regard the corps as their own personal pork barrel. It infuriated Mr. Bush, not only because he is trying to trim what he regards as wasteful domestic spending, but also because he expects his appointees to toe the line.

Mr. Parker's apostasy gives Mr. Bush a chance to do something few other presidents have done — pick a tough, talented manager for the job. What the agency and the country need is a courageous administrator willing to reform a big, plodding, self- serving bureaucracy.

The corps is a Pentagon-run organization with a largely civilian work force of about 37,000 employees. At any given moment, it has billions of dollars worth of projects under way. It is basically in the engineering and construction business, building levees to control floods, turning rivers into canals, dredging harbors, cleaning up nuclear waste sites, as well as repairing and managing federal dams that generate one-fourth of the nation's hydroelectric power.

Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has tangled with the corps, usually over wasteful spending. The corps tends to win. The civilian mediocrities appointed to run the place, of whom Mr. Parker was only the latest, are no match for the permanent alliance between powerful members of Congress and the military commanders who control the agency's various divisions and geographical districts.

If efficiency is Mr. Bush's goal, he will be much better off naming an independent-minded executive instead of another pork-minded congressman. Should the new administrator also turn out to be a conservationist, so much the better. Indeed, the corps vacancy offers Mr. Bush a chance to atone in part for his previous indifference to environmental values. Among other things, the corps is the custodian of the nation's wetlands. It is the corps that decides whether a developer or builder can drain and fill these wetlands, and on this score it has been inconsistent at best. The corps also has an enormous impact on the nation's rivers and streams. On the plus side, it has begun to show an open mind about altering water flows in the Missouri River to protect endangered wildlife. But at the same time, it has championed changes in its own rules that would allow mine operators to dump poisonous wastes in rivers and streams.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been able to deflect criticism because it does so many nice things for members of Congress. Yet there are hints of disenchantment even on Capitol Hill. The day before Mr. Parker's resignation, three influential senators — Robert Smith of New Hampshire, John McCain of Arizona and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin — proposed legislation that would overhaul the corps, and require stricter environmental standards and independent reviews of all controversial projects.

Whether Mr. Bush's present annoyance leads to reforms in an agency whose independence has survived all of his predecessors remains to be seen. Yet the corps seems on shakier ground than it has been for a long time, and deservedly so.