Reform for the Corps

Congress appears to be on track to approve a major water resources bill that would, among other provisions, provide long-overdue money for Everglades restoration and money to begin rebuilding Louisiana’s vulnerable wetlands. But the House and Senate versions of the bill diverge on one crucial issue: reforming the Army Corps of Engineers.

This difference should be resolved by Senate and House negotiators in favor of the stronger Senate version, which guarantees meaningful reform.

Compared with most government agencies, the corps has always lived a charmed and largely undisciplined life, accountable to no one except a Congress that is happy to let it do whatever it wants as long as it builds the dams, levees, bridges and other pork-barrel projects dear to Congressional hearts.

One result is that over the years the corps has inflated the economic payoffs of its projects while underestimating their potential damage to the environment. As the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, the corps has also made misjudgments in engineering and design.

The Senate version addresses this by requiring independent peer review of the design, cost and environmental consequences of projects exceeding $40 million in value. The House version offers a review process that is more loosely structured and is independent in name only. It gives the corps all sorts of wiggle room, including the authority to define the scope of the reviews, which in turn could leave important issues unexamined.

There are other differences between the two versions, but this is the most important. The Senate should stand firm.

Editorial From the New York Times.