Reining in the Corps of Engineers

Time ^ | MICHAEL GRUNWALD

[Lorianne]

In the pantheon of dumb Army Corps of Engineers boondoggles, a $112 million flood-control scheme in Missouri's southeast bootheel ranks among the dumbest. It would drain more wetlands than all American developers drained last year, and the Corps has admitted that the town it's supposed to protect will flood just as often (once every 10 years) if and when it's completed. The Corps also admitted that its original economic rationale depended on a math error. In private e-mails, even the agency's top lobbyist described it as "an economic dud with huge environmental consequences."

Now a federal judge has made it official, shutting down work on the levee-and-pump project and ordering the Corps to undo the millions of dollars' worth of work it's already done. In an extraordinarily harsh opinion, D.C. District Court Judge James Robertson accused the Corps of cooking the books of the project's benefit-cost analysis in a desperate effort to justify construction: "More disturbingly," his opinion reads, "the Corps has demonstrated its willingness to do whatever it takes to proceed with this project."

[Lorianne]

Ok, so who's pet pork project is this one?

[TaMoDee]

You got it right! No money for the project from Congress
no work by the Corps.

[sinanju]

I may well be getting my history scrambled but I think I read about this one some years before. East Prairie was settled by former slaves in the 1870’s. No one else would live there because (guess what?) the river obliterates the place every ten years. This was in the nineties and building a huge project to “protect” the place was then seen as politically correct.

Then again, I could be dead wrong and merely suffering from early Alzeheimer’s.

[sergeantdave]

We have the Corps fighting beavers up here.

Score - Beavers 2 Corps 0

[mad_as_he$$]

I was under the impression that the Corps had finally realized that channeling the river was not going to work and had started programs to deliberately let it flood certain areas to relieve pressure on the levees. Is this some Congressional boondoggle that got traded for some other Corps pet project?

BTW of all of the dysfunctional Federal agencies the Corps is one or tow on e the list of completely broken or useless.

[mad_as_he$$]

is one or two....more coffee please.