Dubious Distinction

Independent agencies have repeatedly denounced ecologically disastrous, economically dubious, politically inspired water projects of the Army Corps of Engineers. Here are five of the most egregious:

Yazoo Pump

This $203 million plan to build the world's largest flood-control pump in the Mississippi Delta is a pet project of Mississippi Republican Sens. Thad Cochran and Trent Lott. It could drain as many as 200,000 acres of wetlands in an effort to reduce flooding on heavily subsidized soybean farms. An Environmental Protection Agency study concluded that it would cost less to buy out the farms.

St. Johns Bayou- New Madrid Floodway

This $112 million plan to build two massive pumps and a levee in southeast Missouri has been pushed by Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) and Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), even though it could drain 36,000 acres of wetlands. It has been promoted as a flood-control project for East Prairie, but Corps documents suggest the project will not reduce flooding in the town. The project is also designed to promote development in a floodway that the Corps is supposed to drown on purpose if the Mississippi River ever gets too high. And the Corps admitted in court that its economic rationale is based on a basic math error.

Upper Mississippi River Navigation

This is the project that embroiled the Corps in scandal in 2000, after the agency economist in charge of studying a $1.2 billion navigation project -- another Bond favorite -- concluded that the numbers didn't add up. Corps leaders then yanked him off the study, and ordered his colleagues to concoct an economic justification for the locks. The Army inspector general and the National Academy of Sciences wrote scathing reports, and the Corps agreed to revisit the study. In December 2004, the Corps recommended a $7.7 billion navigation project that includes some "environmental improvements."

Delaware River Deepening

In 2002, the Government Accountability Office concluded that the Corps justification of this $311 million dredging project relied on "miscalculations, invalid assumptions, and outdated information," vastly overstating the potential benefits to a few oil refineries and wildly understating the costs to taxpayers. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has pushed the deepening as a boon to the Port of Philadelphia as well as the oil refineries, and the Corps now relies on a new analysis to justify the project.

Oregon Inlet Jetties

The GAO also trashed the economic justification of this $108 million project to build stone jetties to protect fishing boats around North Carolina's Outer Banks, and environmental agencies warned of serious impacts to Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. The jetties would have cost the equivalent of $500,000 for every boat in the local fleet, but the Bush administration killed the project in 2003.

-- Michael Grunwald