Why Not the Corps of Engineers? — EATING THE EVERGLADES

          In numerous recent documents related to the CERP, the Corps of Engineers states that many of the problems now facing the Everglades are the result of “unanticipated effects of the existing C&SF Project” [emphasis supplied by the incredulous author]. Another favorite Corps phrase describing what happened in south Florida is, unintended adverse impacts. Believe that unadulterated nonsense and there’s a large, well-developed island in the Hudson River I’d love to sell you cheap.

          Shame on us if we ever accept uncritically the meretricious drek that spews out of the mouth of the Corps. In the C&SF Project, Congress directed to Corps to dry out the Everglades, an activity which by definition changed the water quantity. So people could use the land for agriculture. Which naturally also changed the water quality. As a direct result of the Corps’s work, farmers could sink mega-millions in the land without fear of losing their investments through flooding. Big surprise that the Corps’s extensive drainage activities were successful and its mandated objectives were achieved.

          By the Corps’s own estimate, about one-half of the Everglades has been lost to agribusiness and urban development and the once nearly 103-mile long, meandering Kissimmee River was converted into a 56-mile long concrete canal separated into five artificial sections. Countless other rivers, sloughs, and streams have been canalized or otherwise severely altered. And the Corps maintains with a straight face that those problems were unanticipated? Or maybe the appropriate word is unintended. Either way, the Corps’s explanation is a bunch of unadulterated, self-serving crap.

          If you, Gentle Readers, are unable to figure out that the Corps of Engineers has been dissembling to the public about their culpability in the destruction of the Everglades, delete all evidence of this blog from your computer. Seriously. Because nothing I can say or do will help you out of that mindset.

          Okay, for those skeptics out there who think I should cut the Corps a little slack, I’d like to refer you to the critical enabling legislation that made the destruction of the Everglades possible, The Flood Control Act of 1948. House Document No. 643, which was the basis of the Act, contains a highly significant statement.

The parched prairies and burning mucklands of the Everglades in 1945, the flooding of thousands of acres of farms and communities in 1947, and the intrusion of saltwater into land aquifers of the east coast are basically the results of altering the balance of natural forces. [Emphasis added by the author]

          Exactly who was responsible and how was that balance altered? By drainage systems designed by civil engineers and water managers working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. So much for inadvertent consequences. In 1948 even the Washington politicians knew what had happened to south Florida. It didn’t take a PhD in biology or ecology to understand who caused the environmental imbalances and why. But, naturally that insight is beyond the analytical ability of the Corps. Which is one reason I’m so critical of that integrity-challenged agency. Actually, who out there trusts people or institutions that lie as a matter of normal practice? Which defines precisely the Corps of Engineers throughout its extensive organizational career.

          Everyone with a functioning brain has recognized the mistakes made when the Corps canalized the Kissimmee River and promptly destroyed its associated wetlands and Lake Okeechobee as natural systems. Today, that’s a no-brainer. But the real question is whether the Corps actually learned any lessons from its past egregious errors and destructive environmental practices. Well, to find the answer all you have to do is to look in two key places. First, check out what the Corps identifies as recommended actions in its Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. Which, you may remember was approved by Congress in the omnibus Water Resources Development Act of 2000.

          Here’s one critical example from the CERP. I realize the following fact has been mentioned several times before but it bears repetition and explanation in this specific context. Each day approximately 1.7 billion gallons of excess water are drained from the Everglades to the coast. That’s right. Each and every day of the year. That’s the figure provided to the public by the Corps itself. Since it can be difficult for us non-engineers to get a handle on such a gigundus number, here’s a measure to help everyone understand exactly how much water we’re talking about. If that annual water loss (620.5 billion gal/year) were pumped through a 4-inch pipe, the pipeline would start from Lake Okeechobee and wrap around the Earth’s Equator 7,200 times, extending some 180,000,000 miles. No joke. Do the math if you don’t believe me. Or get a civil engineer/hydrologist to do it for you, which is what I did. Another way to look at it is if a pipeline that long were to blast out of southern Florida for outer space and rocket all the way around the Sun, it would just about make it back to Earth. The truly sobering fact is those 620.5 billion gal/year water losses occurs each and every year. So, when you see that 1.7 billion gallons per day number, you should think about the Corps’s water management technology and our tax-payer dollars that make it possible.

          The second place we should look is at what the Corps has been doing in the western part of the Everglades and in the Big Cypress Swamp. Well, the truth is the Corps has not covered itself in glory there either. In late November 2002, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the Council of Civic Associations issued a report titled, Road to Ruin, that in part stated: “The Corps’s regulatory division is allowing the dismantling of watersheds while its planning division is using public funds for restoration programs in the same ecosystem” [Author’s Note: Emphasis is contained in the original document]. The NWF charged the Corps with ignoring its own rules and with violating Federal law with respect to environmental impact statements and issuing permits that seriously jeopardize the western Everglades through over-development. That behavior is the very same that nearly destroyed the Kissimmee River and the eastern Everglades.

          The only explanations for those Corps actions are institutional stupidity or caving in to sustained high-level political pressure. With the greatest confidence I would bet my house, cars, three children, six grandchildren, and all my retirement funds on the latter.

          According to the NWF, the Corps of Engineers and SFWMD, the two agencies officially charged with protecting wetlands by overseeing wetland filling and mitigation, are actively permitting the destruction of wetlands in the western Everglades-Big Cypress. Between 1998 and 2002, the Corps permitted more than 3,800 acres of wetlands to be drained in parts of the western Everglades for development. By the Corps’s own records, it failed to deny a single permit application in the one million acre study area of the western Everglades. In its Report, the NWF contended that the two agencies are officially allowing the destruction of wetlands in the western Everglades-Big Cypress the same way they allowed the destruction of the eastern Everglades. Turns out déjà vu is alive and well at the Corps and SFWMD.

          Let’s put things on an objective basis with respect to problems the Corps has had in south Florida. Several nationally prominent research scientists have concluded that barriers to true ecosystem restoration have arisen when institutions like the Corps establish operating premises that are less than system-wide in scope. Take a moment and think of how the Corps has intentionally compartmentalized flood control, water management, and ecological values. By compartmentalize I mean they treat those three elements as if they were absolutely separate, unrelated, and distinct. Elements that are compartmentalized are by definition isolated from each other and are not allowed to interact. That’s great except when you’re dealing with natural systems in which water flow, quality, periodicity, and quality are all tied together in the creation and sustenance of a unified but fragile ecosystem.

          Here’s another wonderful example of compartmentalism hard at work at the Corps and the SFWMD: “Dr. David Rudnick, a senior scientist with the South Florida Water Management District, which helps coordinate the Everglades restoration effort, said researchers are still studying nitrogen’s effects. Because the project [CERP] concentrates on the Everglades, officials pay less attention to the marine environment, and therefore less attention to nitrogen.” Sure, that’ll work. At least until all the coral and bottom grasses in Biscayne Bay National Park and Florida Bay have died off. That’s when the dazed and befuddled engineers at the Corps and SFWMD would finally tumble to the fact that something’s dreadfully wrong. Why don’t we take a page from the Corps’s book and wait until all the south and central Florida ecosystems are dying and it’s too late to act. The big advantage of that tactic is that after it’s too late all those pesky environmentalists won’t have anything to bitch and piss and moan about. Now that is really something to think about.

          That specific problem, when coupled with the Corps’s demonstrated difficulty in learning from experience or from new information, makes the barriers to restoration that much more difficult to overcome. You should really read that NWF report, Road to Ruin. It will make you angry and sad at the same time.

          Let’s stand this situation on its head and hear the straight skinny from the mouths of the guys who are charged with making the CERP happen: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The primary and overarching purpose of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan [CERP] is to restore the south Florida ecosystem, which includes the Everglades. This purpose has guided all aspects of the Plan’s development and proposed implementation. It is a framework and guide to restore, protect, and preserve the water resources of the greater Everglades ecosystem. The Plan has been described as the world’s largest ecosystem restoration effort, and includes restoring natural flows of water, water quality, and more natural hydro-periods within the remaining natural areas. The Plan is intended to result in a sustainable south Florida by restoring the ecosystem, ensuring clean and reliable water supplies and providing flood protection.

          Okay, brave words those. But how many people familiar with the hellaciously complex challenges posed by “fixing” the disaster the Corps built over the past many decades truly believe that those lofty goals of sustainability are achievable? My honest guess? Zero. Flat out, dead-ass zero. Fact is, none of the real movers and shakers in Florida and Washington give a wood rat’s ass one way or the other as long as the water and the money keep flowing. In their direction. Guaranteeing their stay in Fat City.

          Perhaps skeptics need a few specific cases that illustrate the Corps’s standard operating procedures in terms of the environment. Procedures that have made people like me harsh critics. Here’s an example from the heart of the Mid-West that made national headline news for two years running.

          In 1993, Donald Sweeney, PhD, a highly-respected Senior Regional Economist at the Corps of Engineers St. Louis District, was assigned as the lead economist on a major benefit-cost analysis to determine the economic feasibility of expanding seven locks on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. Sweeney was appointed technical manager of an economics work group for the Upper Mississippi River, Illinois Waterway Navigation Feasibility Study that covered parts of five states along the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois, and included up to a potential $4 billion in waterway improvements. At that time, that specific project was the second largest in Corps history.

          During that period, Sweeney pioneered the development of an innovative and sophisticated computer-oriented economic model named “ESSENCE.” The purpose of the model was to enable accurate assessments of the project’s relative benefits and costs. Later, after Sweeney’s work had been vilified, the National Research Council evaluated Sweeney’s model and said that it was “a major advance over previous economic models used by the Corps.”

          After a five-year evaluation effort, Sweeney and his work group concluded that pursuing the locks project was not in the nation’s best economic interests. The data his group collected and analyzed showed that projected economic benefits would not justify the locks project for at least another three decades. If then. When he reported that and other negative conclusions to his superiors, the Corps economic team Sweeney headed was disbanded and Sweeney was removed from his managerial role. The new economic team that was assembled included Sweeney in a strictly secondary and greatly reduced role as a lowly economic advisor.

          Over a year later, when it became clear that senior Army Corps of Engineers officials and high ranking officers were intent upon manipulating the results of the benefit-cost study until the locks project appeared to be justified economically, Sweeney went public. He revealed details and documents to various newspapers that first reported his story in mid-February 2000. He also filed an affidavit and supporting documents with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Sweeney found the whistle and started blowing hard enough to get the national attention he knew was necessary to focus the appropriate spotlights on the project.

          The Washington Post then published a number of internal Corps e-mails that showed Corps military and civilian officials had launched a campaign “to develop evidence or data to support a defensible set of projects, announcing that if the economic data did not “capture the need for navigation improvements, then we have to find some other way to do it.” The Corps’s desperation to fabricate supportive economic data for their pet projects can easily be explained. U.S. law stipulates that “Congress will fund water resources projects only if a project’s benefits exceed its costs” [Emphasis by the author]. If you believe that the benefits of many water resources projects actually exceed the costs, you also believe all whores have hearts of gold and are pursuing Master’s degrees in Social Work or Psychology during the day. But, hey, it’s the law and the Corps knew it.

          In March 2000, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel determined there was sufficient evidence that the Corps had “engaged in violations of law, rule or regulation and a gross waste of taxpayers’ funds” and requested that Secretary of Defense William Cohen conduct a thorough investigation into the alleged wrongdoings. In May 2000, a report by an independent panel of economists, commissioned by the Northeast-Midwest Institute, found that the Corps’s economics for the project in question were highly flawed. Also in May 2000, Richard Manguno, Sweeney’s successor as head of the project’s economic team, swore in an affidavit to Congressional investigators that senior Corps officials had pressured him to manipulate the project’s benefit-cost analysis. It was business as usual for the Corps, despite the intense national public pressure to be honest. The Corps’s motto seems to be: Why tell the truth when a plausible lie better serves our purpose? Why indeed? A question for the ages.

          In October 2000, desperate to salvage their badly tarnished reputation, the Corps of Engineers commissioned an independent study by two North Dakota State University economists. Unfortunately for the Corps, the professors concluded that the District’s second set of economists had used flawed methodology in their benefit-cost analysis. The handwriting was on the wall for all to see. In November 2000, the U.S. Army Inspector General substantiated Sweeney’s allegations that Corps officials manipulated data to justify the project’s multi-billion dollar price tag.

          In early February 2001, a study by the National Academy of Sciences also concluded that Donald Sweeney was correct about the initial conclusions he reached in his benefit-cost analysis and, among other things, recommended that future Corps studies be subject to independent technical review. Which, in the academic world that prizes independence of thought, was a vicious body blow and a face-slapping rejection of the Corps’s wide-eyed claims of innocence. Talk about being caught in the spotlight with their fingers in the cookie jar. Those guys were proved to be red-faced liars at every turn. And it wasn’t just low-level grunts we’re talking about. Several Corps generals and other high ranking Army staff were implicated in the scandal as the chief instigators of the wrong-doing. Not much anyone could do to “explain away” nasty problems like the ones Sweeney exposed. We’re talking about systemic institutional failure. Failure to realize that truth and integrity take precedence over political motivation. Don’t forget, we’re talking about the United States Army here. Warriors who willingly volunteer to give their very lives to protect the American way of life. Or to protect the right of Congress to award pork to their biggest campaign contributors. Same thing, right? Or so the Corps generals seemed to think.

          Here’s another glaring example of blatant Corps chicanery from the East Coast. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal flows across northern Maryland and Delaware, connecting the Delaware River estuary with the Chesapeake Bay and the Port of Baltimore. The C&D Canal is owned by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia District. Therefore the Corps engineers and hydrologists can’t possibly claim to be unaware of the Canal’s physical characteristics. At its existing dredged depth of thirty-five feet and fourteen miles in length, the C&D Canal is an absolutely unremarkable water management project. Except for the fact that, according to official Philadelphia District Corps documents, the Canal flows in opposite directions simultaneously. That’s right, a canal that flows uphill and downhill at the same time naturally. Courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

          When Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company was established in 1802 the proposed route was surveyed by the Corps of Engineers. In 1829, the original canal opened, connecting Chesapeake City to Delaware City, just north of the present entrance at Reedy Point, Delaware. The canal was operated by a private corporation until 1919 when it was bought by the Corps of Engineers. From 1921 to 1927, the Corps widened it, removed all the locks and converted it to a sea-level canal. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was set in its current configuration approximately 33 years ago when the Corps dredged it to a depth of 35 feet. Today, the C&D Canal is part of the Inter-coastal Waterway, the world’s third busiest canal, and the oldest major commercial waterway in the U.S. still in use.

          In a study for the Port of Baltimore on a $90 million proposal to deepen the C&D Canal, the Corps supported that project and concluded that the Canal’s net flow was west to east, which therefore would minimize the proposed project’s ecological damage to the sensitive Chesapeake Bay. But in another study for the Port of Philadelphia for a $311 million plan to deepen the Delaware River, the same Corps District concluded the very same C&D Canal flowed east to west, thus minimizing ecological damage to the Delaware River estuary. The Corps staff responsible for both assessments were professional hydrologists and water resource engineers. Obviously, a lack of technical expertise was not the problem. Those good old boys were simply caught lying through their teeth. Can you say the two magic words? Political pressure. And we all know how the Corps reacts to that, with its peanut butter legs and non-existent ethical backbone.

          That $90 million project to deepen the C&D Canal from 35 feet to 40 feet was authorized contingent on favorable Corps studies to improve a shortcut for ocean-going vessels to the Port of Baltimore. However, the Corps’s own studies demonstrated that that project would neither increase shipping nor create more jobs. Then, an independent review panel determined that deepening could not be justified economically since justification of the previous canal deepening had been projected based on major increases in ship traffic. But ship traffic had actually declined to less than 15 percent of the projected levels. Hey, hard economic facts make no difference to the Corps. They’re simply another problem to be whisked under the rug.

          The sad problem is that there are plenty more examples like those above that clearly illustrate where the Corps’s heart is. In concluding this little demonstration, for further enlightenment we turn to the Corps itself and listen as their mouthpiece speaks. “We know there will be rocks and shoals along the way,” John Fumero, the Jacksonville District’s General Counsel said of the CERP. “People are going to have to trust us to do the right thing.” Is anyone out there rolling over, helpless with laughter? Or maybe simply flat out hysterical? Trust the Corps? Is he out of his mind?

          After decades of presenting bald-faced prevarications to the American public about the damage they were doing to one environment after another, after decades of bending over for the moneyed interests that fund congressional campaigns, what possible reason is there to trust the Corps of Engineers about anything? After decades of misplaced confidence and misplaced hope, only canonized saints or venal congressmen trust the Corps. And without independent scientific verification only fools, wide-eyed innocents, the totally inexperienced, or greed-monger powerbrokers believe one word the Corps says about the environment. By the way, you should remember that guy’s name. John Fumero. Sounds like that good old boy has a very bright future with the Florida’s fat cats. Very bright indeed.