Excerpted from Great Lakes United's Habitat Watch
#285
(
http://www.glu.org/bhptf/Habitat%20Watch/Mainpage2003.htm )
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to cut ties with Congress
and operate like a business
The military commander of the Army Corps of
Engineers, Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers, wants to perform an overhaul of the much
criticized and mistrusted federal agency. The draft plan "USACE 2012" would
increase the military's role in reviewing and authorizing water projects and
decrease the role of civilian employees and Congress. Critics say the plan was
derived out of "supreme arrogance."
The plan proposes dividing the Corps into eight
"regional business centers." Each business center would promote a service such
as: navigation, flood control, recreation, and environmental restoration. The
current Corps is in theory operating as a public agency- where project and
construction requests must be requested by Congress and must meet a series of
cost-shares and oversights. The new military-dominated business centers would
be a huge change in Corps operations, where the agency would promote projects,
solicit business and make decisions internally.
The overhaul is being proposed at a time when the
Corps gathers little public trust and has been criticized by lawmakers, the
General Accounting Office, the National Academy of Sciences, internal Pentagon
investigators and the Office of Management and Budget for poorly planned
projects and falsified economic analyses. In addition to recent backtracking
after expansion planning in the Great Lakes Navigation System review drew deep
and unified binational public opposition, the agency has been forced to suspend
work on deepening the Delaware River, dredging the Chesapeake and Delaware
Canal, and restart a huge Mississippi River study after a whistleblower
revealed and the US Army Inspector General verified that numbers were changed
to create economic justification for billion-dollar lock expansions.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
(PEER) has already sent a letter to J.P. Woodley, the Assistant Secretary of
the Army for Civil Works, asking that he intercede and put the Corps plan,
slated to take effect October 1st, on hold. PEER says that the proposed plan
contradicts Bush Administration policies, breaks congressional commitments, and
violates Army guidance that the Corps not become a project promoter. PEER also
says that the proposed plan does not address any of the criticisms raised of
the Corps but would make it even harder to monitor Corps activities.
An article from Washington Post can be found
here
.
The PEER response, including a link to USACE 2012, a full
critical analysis of the Corps plan, and the PEER letter to Mr. Woodley is at:
http://www.peer.org/press/396.html
