Regarding your editorial “The Earmark Ban’s Progress” (May 20): The lack of earmarks doesn’t excuse the wasteful and reform-lite Water Resources Reform and Development Act.

One project in the bill is the $10 billion “Great Wall of Louisiana” that would consist of 98 miles of levees and walls, some of which are 16 feet tall and as wide as two football fields are long. The Army Corps of Engineers admits that the project wouldn’t be cost justified using regular accounting methods. Also, the bill sticks taxpayers with 85% of the tab for the massively over budget and delayed $3 billion Olmsted navigation lock project, 35% more than required by law.

The new system to authorize projects doesn’t set priorities and will likely add to the $60 billion to $80 billion construction backlog (the agency gets less than $2 billion in construction funding annually). Extensive crediting for various private project work will result in a disjointed parochial water-project delivery system.

We can cheer that a major infrastructure bill can move without earmarks, but that alone doesn’t equal not being wasteful.

Stephen Ellis

Taxpayers for Common Sense

Washington