A flood of pork

BIG CITIES AND SMALL towns throughout the nation bear the scars of ugly concrete trenches replacing natural streams. The ugliness is courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the name of flood control. Most projects were justified to some degree, but the corps habitually built on a scale that exceeded

reasonable need and common sense.

The same could be said for many of the corps’ dams and reservoirs, particularly in the West, and even one of the agency’s proudest achievements, the lock-and-dam system on the Mississippi River and its major tributaries.

Historically, the Mississippi has linked Midwest farmers and manufacturers to distant markets. Over the last century, the corps developed a series of locks and dams that allowed vessels to bypass swift drops, even waterfalls, along the more-turbulent upper parts of the river.

Now, the corps argues, that system is desperately in need of reconstruction. The Senate is considering a version of a House-passed $3.1-billion construction and ecosystem restoration project that includes $1.8 billion for seven new locks and dams on the upper Mississippi. Both are part of a huge and often wasteful omnibus water bill.

The corps argues that it has to do major construction to handle higher barge traffic in coming years. Yet barge traffic has declined over the last 15 years. Even the corps reluctantly acknowledges that the project isn’t entirely necessary; it says more than $900 million has been spent to renovate the system and admits that “the life of existing locks and dams and their components can be extended for another 50 years with periodic rehabilitation.”

One major reason for the recent decline in barge traffic is that much of the corn that once was shipped on the river now remains in the Midwest for conversion to ethanol. The same members of Congress who support the huge river project are the ones who pushed Congress to require the unnecessary but costly addition of ethanol to gasoline in California.

The Senate should decline to pass the omnibus water bill, in which the corps’ project is far from the only excess.