[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 44 (Thursday, April 1, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3528-S3529]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      CORPS OF ENGINEERS MODERNIZATION AND IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2004

   Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Corps of 
Engineers Modernization and Improvement Act of 2004, S. 2188, which I 
introduced right before the March recess. I am pleased that the senior 
Senator from Arizona, Senator McCain, and senior Senator from South 
Dakota, Senator Daschle, joined me in cosponsoring this legislation.
   This legislation is particularly timely because it comes at a time 
when Congress is debating the Nation's budget, and when we cannot 
ignore the record-breaking deficits that the Nation faces. Time and 
time again we have heard that fiscal responsibility and environmental 
protection are mutually exclusive. Through this legislation, however, 
we can save taxpayers billions of dollars and protect the environment. 
As evidence of this fact, this bill is supported by Taxpayers for 
Commonsense, the National Taxpayers Union, the National Wildlife 
Federation, American Rivers, the Corps Reform Network, and 
Earthjustice.
   Reforming the Army Corps of Engineers will be a difficult task for 
Congress. It involves restoring credibility and accountability to a 
Federal agency rocked by scandals and constrained by endlessly growing 
authorizations and a gloomy Federal fiscal picture, and yet an agency 
that Wisconsin, and many other states across the country, have come to 
rely upon. From the Great Lakes to the mighty Mississippi, the Corps 
provides aid to navigation, environmental remediation, water control 
and a variety of other services in my State alone.
   My office has strong working relationships with the Detroit, Rock 
Island, and St. Paul district offices that service Wisconsin, and I 
want the fiscal and management cloud over the Corps to dissipate so the 
Corps can continue to contribute to our environment and our economy.
   This legislation evolved from my experience in seeking to offer an 
amendment to the Water Resources Development Act of 2000 to create 
independent review of Army Corps of Engineers' projects. In response to 
my initiative, the bill's managers, which included the former Senator 
from New Hampshire, Senator Bob Smith, and the senior Senator from 
Montana, Senator Baucus, adopted an amendment as part of their 
managers' package to require a National Academy of Sciences study on 
the issue of peer review of Corps projects.
   S. 2188 includes many provisions that were included in two bills, 
one of which I authored and the other I cosponsored, in the 107th 
Congress. It codifies the idea of independent review of the Corps, and 
it provides a mechanism to speed up completion of construction for good 
Corps projects with large public benefits by deauthorizing low priority 
and economically wasteful projects.
   The bill puts forth bold, comprehensive reform measures. It 
modernizes the Corps project planning guidelines, which have not been 
updated since 1983. It requires the corps to use sound science in 
estimating the costs and evaluating the needs for water resources 
projects. Under this bill, a project's benefits must be 1.5 times 
greater than the costs to the taxpayer, which alone would save the 
taxpayers over $4 billion. And, to receive Federal project funding, 
local communities

[[Page S3529]]

must take on a greater share in the costs of the project.
   The bill requires independent review of Corps projects. The National 
Academy of Sciences, the General Accounting Office, and even the 
Inspector General of the Army agree that independent review is 
essential to assure that each Corps project is economically justified.
   The bill also requires strong environmental protection measures. S. 
2188 requires the Corps to mitigate the environmental impacts of its 
projects in a variety of ways, including by avoiding damaging wetlands 
in the first place and either holding other lands or constructing 
weltands elsewhere when it cannot avoid destroying them. The Corps 
requires private developers to meet this standard when they construct 
projects as a condition of receiving a federal permit, and the federal 
government should live up to the same standard.

  Too often, the Corps does not complete required mitigation and 
actually enhances environmental risks. I feel strongly that the Corps 
must complete its mitigation and the public should be able to track the 
progress of mitigation projects. In addition, the concurrent mitigation 
requirements of this bill would actually reduce the total mitigation 
costs by ensuring the purchase of mitigation lands as soon as possible.
  This bill streamlines the existing automatic deauthorization process 
for the $58 billion project backlog, and it will keep the Corps focused 
on its primary missions of flood control, navigation, and environmental 
protection. Under the bill a project authorized for construction but 
never started is deauthorized if it is denied appropriations funds 
towards construction for 5 straight years. In addition, a project that 
has begun construction but been denied appropriations funds toward 
construction for 3 straight years is deauthorized. The bill also 
preserves congressional prerogatives over setting the Corps' 
construction priorities by allowing Congress a chance to reauthorize 
any of these projects before they are automatically deauthorized. This 
process will be transparent to all interests, because the bill requires 
the Corps to make an annual list of projects in the construction 
backlog available to Congress and the public at large.
  This measure will bring about a comprehensive revision of the project 
review and authorization procedures at the Army Corps of Engineers. My 
goals for the Corps are to increase transparency and accountability, to 
ensure fiscal responsibility, and to allow greater stakeholder 
involvement in their projects. I remain committed to these goals, and 
to seeing Corps reform enacted as part of this Congress' water 
resources bill.
  I feel that this bill is an important step down the road to a 
reformed Corps of Engineers. This bill establishes a framework to catch 
mistakes by Corps planners, deter any potential bad behavior by Corps 
officials to justify questionable projects, end old unjustified 
projects, and provide planners desperately needed support against the 
never-ending pressure of project boosters. Those boosters, include 
congressional interests, which is why I believe that this body needs to 
champion reform--to end the perception that Corps projects are all pork 
and no substance. All too often Members of Congress have seen Corps 
projects as a way to bring home the bacon, rather than ensuring that 
the taxpayers get the most bang for their Federal buck.
  I wish it were the case that the changes we are proposing today were 
not needed, but unfortunately, I see that there is need for this bill. 
I want to make sure that future Corps projects no longer fail to 
produce predicted benefits, stop costing the taxpayers more than the 
Corps estimated, do not have unanticipated environmental impacts, and 
are built in an environmentally compatible way. This bill will help the 
Corps do a better job, which is what the taxpayers and the environment 
deserve.

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