U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works controversies

The United States Army Corps of Engineers is involved with a wide range of public works projects, including environmental protection, water supply, recreation, flood damage and reduction, beach nourishment, homeland security, military construction, and support for other government agencies.

[1] Local citizen, special interest, and political groups may lobby Congress for authorization and funding for specific projects in their areas.

Certain projects are said to have caused profound environmental damage or delivered questionable economic benefits, such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet in southeast Louisiana.

On 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina passed to the east of New Orleans, the Corps's flood protection failed catastrophically with levee breaches in over 50 places.

The project was to construct a series of control structures, concrete floodwalls, and levees to provide hurricane protection to areas around Lake Pontchartrain.

[11] IPET membership consisted of multiple employees of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, past and present, as well as individuals from academia, other states, water experts, and other Federal agencies.

The same month, Washington Post article reported that "local officials often resisted proposals to protect their communities from storms because they did not want to pay their share of federal projects.

The authors concluded, "we have not uncovered any information that would suggest that the members of the OLB who served on the Engineering Committee or the OLD staff engineers behaved irresponsibly or in a manner that did not place the interests of the city residents at the forefront...."[13] In June 2006, General Strock accepted responsibility on behalf of the Corps for the failure of the flood protection, calling it "a system in name only."

Meanwhile, the ERP report stated that had levees and pump stations not failed, "far less property loss would have occurred and nearly two-thirds of deaths could have been avoided".

On 9 July 2007, retired LtG Elvin "Vald" Heiberg III, stated in a letter to the New Orleans Times Picayune that people should blame him for the Katrina disaster.

[18] However, two law professors, Thomas McGarity and Douglas Kysar, in their article that highlighted the 'hazards of hindsight analysis,’ put the process under the microscope and concluded that the corps had decided to build what locals preferred.

The IPET draft findings indicate that; With the exception of four foundation design failures, all of the major breaches were caused by overtopping and subsequent erosion.

The grassroots group, Levees.Org, claimed that the IPET investigation and an expert review panel (ERP) convened by ASCE lacked credibility because of the involvement and management of the Corps of Engineers.

In March 2007, the City of New Orleans filed a $77 billion claim against the USACE for damages sustained from faulty levee construction and resultant flooding during Hurricane Katrina.

In January 2008, the District Court ruled that even though the US Army Corps of Engineers was negligent and derelict in their duty to provide flood protection for the citizens of New Orleans, he was compelled to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed against the Corps for levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina due to FCA 1928 which protects the federal government from lawsuits over flood control projects.

In November 2009, the US District Court for Eastern Louisiana held the US Army Corps of Engineers responsible for the flooding from the two east IHNC levee breaches (and dozens of others) because the federal agency failed to properly maintain the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO).

In 2008, the US District Court placed responsibility for this floodwall's collapse squarely on the US Army Corps of Engineers; however, the agency is protected from financial liability in the Flood Control Act of 1928.In December 2008, the Sandy Rosenthal leader of the group Levees.org called a New Orleans CBS affiliate television station and offered to give them an exclusive to publicize several incidences[spelling?]

[32] Three days after the incident was publicized, the Commander of the New Orleans District of the Corps of Engineers, Colonel Alvin Lee, issued a formal apology.

"We believe that (corps New Orleans District office) officials took appropriate actions once informed of the allegations at issue," Assistant Inspector General John Crane said in a letter to U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

[38] In May 2009, an internet blogger discovered that OPP had a bar graph on its website that boasted how it helped reduce negative news coverage that plagued the Corps following Hurricane Katrina.

Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been wrangling over how to allocate water from the Chattahoochee watershed for years as metro Atlanta's population has doubled since 1980.

One of the major responsibilities of the Corps of Engineers is administering the wetlands permitting program under Section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972.

In 2001, the Court further decided 5–4 that the CWA does not cover areas that had filled with water (Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook Cty.

The law has been contentious with property owners because it requires a permit for filling and dredging wetlands that empty into navigable waters and their tributaries.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "It is unfortunate that no opinion commands a majority of the court on precisely how to read Congress' limits on the reach of the Clean Water Act.

"Why," asked WCU program director Rob Young, "should federal taxpayers bail out a beachfront when local residents won't?

"[citation needed] Reacting to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, on 23 May 2010, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell wrote a letter to Lieutenant General Robert L. Van Antwerp of the US Army Corps of Engineers,[55] stating that Louisiana has the right to dredge sand to build barrier islands to keep the oil spill from its wetlands without the approval of the Corps, as the 10th Amendment to the Constitution does not grant the federal government the authority to deny a state the right to act in an emergency.

They made a very big mess, and additionally, beaches which are tested weekly in the summer for bacteria and toxins experienced unprecedented closings due to dangerous levels.

Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, declared the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 as "greatest disaster of peace times in our history", which covered 26,000 square miles (67,000 km2) in seven states.

The McCain-Feingold amendments face opposition and a rival set of measures by the main authors of the water resources bill, Sens.