Army Corps Falsely Justified $1-Billion Project, Probe Finds

Top Army Corps of Engineers officials manipulated data to justify a $1-billion Mississippi River construction project--and pressured subordinates to approve other big-ticket, taxpayer-funded public work projects, a Pentagon investigation released Wednesday found.

The corps, an Army branch under civilian oversight, is responsible for flood control and river navigation and has approved a huge list of construction projects in waterways around the country. By law, the agency must determine that the benefits of any project will outweigh the costs.

But the Pentagon found “strong indications” that the corps suffers from an “institutional bias” toward big projects, which boost its budget and its prestige, and suggested that the agency’s objectivity was suspect.

The perception of bias was so strong that some corps employees said they “had no confidence in the integrity” of project analyses, according to the Army inspector general’s office, which conducted the 10-month investigation. One senior economist described a division of the corps as “corrupt” because its leaders appeared to be working for the pro-construction shipping industry, rather than for taxpayers, the investigation found.

“Pretty explosive stuff there,” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), who has been pushing legislation to reform the corps.

Corps officials in Washington, D.C., said they would launch their own review, to be completed within 180 days, but declined to comment further.

In addition, the Army’s vice chief of staff is considering whether to discipline three officers accused in the report of helping to manipulate data. The officers have all denied wrongdoing and have not been charged with any crimes.

The Pentagon’s probe was prompted by a whistle-blower, economist Donald Sweeney, who spent five years leading the corps’ study of navigational needs on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. When he concluded in 1998 that there was no need for major construction, Sweeney was taken off the project. He then alleged his bosses were trying to rig the data to justify an expensive upgrade of the rivers’ 70-year-old system of locks and dams.

The report found that one corps official let the barge industry, which had a vital interest in river improvements, participate in the cost-benefit analysis. Another corps commander ordered a key variable changed for no mathematical or scientific reason so that the analysis would favor construction, the investigation found.

“The process is clearly broken,” Sweeney said. “I’m looking forward to some kind of systemic change to prevent this from ever happening again.”

Environmental groups backed up Sweeney’s calls for reform, including an independent peer review of all corps studies.

But any changes are expected to face obstacles in Congress. Representatives and senators from both parties have long been protective of the corps and the water projects it delivers to their districts. Senate leaders this year blocked an Army plan to strengthen civilian oversight of the corps. This fall, they opposed a call for independent reviews of corps water projects, voting instead to spend a year studying the proposal.

Still, Kind plans to introduce a reform bill next year. “Hopefully,” he said, the Pentagon report “is going to be a clarion wake-up call for Congress [to take on] corps reform that is long overdue.”

Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), a staunch defender of the Mississippi River upgrades, also called for reviewing corps operations to make sure they “fairly balance the environment, recreation and river transportation” needs.

Corps economists are meanwhile forging ahead with a revised analysis of the Mississippi River project.

Barge operators are continuing to press for major construction along the Mississippi. Environmentalists argue that constructing new locks will destroy aquatic habitat and squander taxpayer money, but the barge industry insists the upgrades are vital to get American farm products to the port of New Orleans faster so they can be exported.

And though the Pentagon report accused the corps of giving the shipping industry undue access to its cost-benefit analysis, barge lobbyists complained Wednesday that the corps hasn’t listened closely enough to their concerns. “By no stretch of the imagination could [our input] be characterized as inappropriate,” said Christopher Brescia, director of the barge industry group MARC 2000.