The
civilian part of the Army Corps of Engineers has more than 20,000 employees and
annual net outlays of $7 billion. It constructs and maintains water
infrastructure such as locks, waterways, and flood control structures. It owns
and operates 75 hydropower plants, manages more than 4,000 recreational areas,
and performs other engineering and construction activities, such as dredging
seaports.
Although
the Corps has built some impressive structures, it also has a history of
scandals and failures, including the disastrous levee failures in New Orleans
during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Congress has long used the agency as a pork
barrel spending machine, often directing funds to low-value projects in the
districts of important members of Congress.
The
Corps does the analyses of proposed projects that it will build itself,
creating a bias toward large and expensive projects. The Pentagon's inspector
general found that the Corps has a "systemic bias" toward major
construction and has been known to do bogus studies to justify costly projects. A number of years ago, leaked internal memoranda by
Corps leaders revealed a strategy to "get creative" in accounting in
order to "get to yes as fast as possible" on proposed projects.
The
Corps has a poor environmental record because of its pro-construction tilt. It
has "channelized dozens of rivers for barges that never
arrived." And its navigation and flood-control structures on the
Mississippi and other rivers may have made flooding worse by forcing rivers
into narrow channels, destroying wetlands, and encouraging the development of
flood-prone areas. In his classic 1993 book on federal water
infrastructure, Cadillac Desert,
Marc Reisner said that the Corps has "ruined more wetlands than anyone in
history, except perhaps its counterpart in the Soviet Union."
A
1971 book by distinguished engineer Arthur Morgan, Dams and Other Disasters,
castigated the Corps for its arrogance and mismanagement. It described how
the agency underestimated the costs of projects, followed shoddy engineering
practices, lied to the public, hid information, and pursued environmentally
damaging projects. Former U.S. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle said the
Corps is "one of the most incompetent and inept organizations in all the
federal government."
Here
is the good news: we do not need a federal agency to build civilian water
infrastructure. The Corps is filling roles that private engineering and
construction companies could fill. When the states need to construct and
maintain levees, harbors, beaches, inland waterways, and recreational areas,
they should hire private companies to do the work. The Army Corps of Engineers
should be privatized and compete for such work.
Consider
the Corps' harbor maintenance activities, which are funded by a federal harbor
maintenance tax collected from shippers on the basis of the value of cargo. The
tax generates about $1.6 billion a year and is spent on projects chosen by
Congress and the Corps. But the federal government is an unneeded middleman
here — local seaport authorities could impose their own charges on shippers to
fund their own dredging and maintenance activities. That way, seaports could
respond directly to market demands, rather than having to lobby Washington for
funding.
The
Corps' 75 hydropower plants should also be privatized. More than two-thirds of
U.S. hydropower plants are owned privately, and those plants produce more than
one-quarter of U.S. hydropower. While federal facilities dominate
hydropower in the western United States, eastern states such as New York and
North Carolina have substantial private hydropower. The private sector is
entirely capable of owning and operating hydropower plants.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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