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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is wasting billions of dollars on environmentally harmful projects, charges a new report by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the National Wildlife Federation (http://www.nwf.org/).

The report, Troubled Waters demonstrates how the Corps could save $6 billion and preserve important habitat if it scuttled 25 projects around the country.

These revelations come amid recent evidence that the Corps of Engineers tampered with economic studies to green-light new construction projects and has a secret plan to grow the agency’s budget by billions of dollars.

The 10 worst projects cited in the report include a $1 billion irrigation project in eastern Arkansas purported to help rice farmers, $311 million deepening of the Delaware River to accommodate bigger ships, and $1.2 billion to expand locks on the Upper Mississippi River to increase barge traffic.

The Troubled Waters report is also a roadmap to systemic reform not seen since President Ronald Reagan signed into law landmark reforms at the Corps of Engineers. Upon enactment of that 1986 law, Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) declared, this “brings to an end the era when water projects were simply a gift from Washington.”

Taxpayer dollars should only go to projects for which local beneficiaries are willing to pay their fair share. President Reagan wrote, “project beneficiaries, not necessarily government entities, should bear a substantial part of the cost.” The law Reagan signed set minimum local cost shares to reduce make-work schemes and gold plating.

These Reagan-era reforms saved real money. A study by a Wharton Business School professor found that requiring local beneficiaries to pay a greater share of project costs reduced overall spending on projects authorized in 1986 by 35% and saving the federal government more than $3 billion.

Fifteen years later, in their secret plan, senior Corps officials call this cost-sharing requirement an “impediment to growth” – an obstacle to be overcome on the way to their 50% budget increase.

In late March, Corps reform should be on the table when the Clinton Administration is scheduled to release its proposed 2000 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), the authorization bill for the embattled Corps of Engineers.

Congress should pass no WRDA bill until a thorough and independent investigation of the Corps of Engineers is completed, unless such a bill makes major reforms.