Two members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation want to reform the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this spring, The Courier reports.
U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-New Orleans, and U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, are including language in the new Water Resource Development Act proposals that would change the Corps’ mitigation requirements, allowing for more use of local dollars and streamlining the project delivery process. The bills are expected to be introduced next month.
Congressmen and local officials hope the reforms will speed up projects and take some of the pressure off the agencies by allowing them to start projects if they have the available money and expedite the permitting process. The Corps of Engineers declined to comment.
“We don’t comment on pending or proposed legislation,” said Rene Poche, spokesman for Corps of Engineers New Orleans office.
Local and state officials have publicly treated the Corps as a whipping boy for years, blaming the agency for lengthy delays on some coastal restoration and storm protection projects. But new Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards and Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman Johnny Bradberry have called for that to end. They’re hoping to mend the relationship between the state and the Corps ahead of an influx of hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for coastal restoration projects beginning next year.
A former CPRA Chairman, Graves often criticized the Corps, saying the agency is wrought with “backwards” policies that are reactive instead of proactive.
Graves points to the Morganza to the Gulf storm protection system as an example of the Corps letting bureaucracy get in the way. The Corps has spent the last two decades performing various studies on the impact of the project. Those studies have cost about $76 million, but the state and Terrebonne Parish Levee District have had to pay for half the cost.
Meanwhile, the project is being built, using local and state dollars. Levee District Director Reggie Dupre projects that 35 miles of continuous storm protection, ranging from Gibson to Pointe-aux-Chenes, will be in place before the 2017 hurricane season, “without a single federal dollar.”
“The Morganza to the Gulf project could not be a better, or worse, poster child of the Corps’ inefficiency,” Graves said. “… If only we had studied this more.”
