St. Louis Post Dispatch
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Corps delays Mississippi River study for a year

By Bill Lambrecht
Tuesday, October 3, 2000

The Army Corps of Engineers announced a one-year delay Tuesday in a benchmark Mississippi River study that was expected to recommend $1 billion worth of improvements at locks and dams north of St. Louis.

The delay was a blow to the barge industry, which has been pushing for expanded locks to ease traffic congestion on the river. Environmentalists and some Corps of Engineers economists have argued that the project is not needed.

The corps said it was postponing its study because the projections of barge traffic it used were old and inflated.

"We can't ignore those numbers and do the study justice," said Ronald F. Fournier, spokesman for the Corps of Engineers' Rock Island, Ill., district, which has handled the study.

The corps had been basing its conclusions on estimates of 1993 river traffic that were found to be too high, Fournier said. He said he did not know how high. The numbers are an important element in deciding whether new construction on the river is warranted.

The announcement brings a measure of vindication to Donald Sweeney, a Corps of Engineers economist from St. Louis who criticized the corps' methods earlier this year. Sweeney alleged in an affidavit to the Office of Special Counsel in Washington that he and other economists had been pressured by high-ranking corps officials to produce studies that strengthened the case for new construction.

Sweeney's allegations triggered several investigations that are continuing.

The so-called draft feasibility study, which has taken seven years and cost $54 million, was supposed to be released this week along with a preliminary environmental study. The studies look 50 years into the future as a basis for planning river management.

Fournier said the completion date had been moved back until Sept. 30, 2001. "We feel it's the right thing to do to incorporate the new traffic projections, new farming trends and new information on global markets," he said.

Chris Brescia, president of MARC 2000, a barge industry trade association in St. Louis, said he regarded it "unconscionable" that the corps had not released its study earlier this year so that Congress could begin debating lock expansion. The barge industry, allied with farm groups, is pushing for doubling the size of seven locks and for other improvements on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

Brescia argued that the delays will put Midwestern farmers at a disadvantage in competing in global markets to sell their grain.

The delay was a victory for environmental advocates. "I think it shows that the Corps is willing to do the right thing and get its numbers right," said Jeff Stein, of the American Rivers advocacy group.