The Week Ending February 25, 2000
This weekly report is written by ASCE's Government Relations staff. If you have questions or comments about any items in this report, please contact Brian Pallasch, Michael Charles, Martin Hight, Austin Fulk, or Liz Hermsen at 202/789-2200.
Inside This Week:
Army Corps of Engineers Under Scrutiny
Spending and management practices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have come under fire recently, especially since the Washington Post reported earlier this month that "several Corps witnesses, along with a revealing trail of Internet e-mails and other documents," upheld a Corps whistleblower’s allegation that USACE modified data in a study to support doubling the size of seven barge locks on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. An article in the Washington Post yesterday also said that Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Joseph Westphal did not know about the Corps military command’s development of a detailed "Program Growth Initiative" that indicated a desire to increase USACE’s $4.1 billion budget to $6.2 billion by 2005, outlining spending targets for various Corps divisions and major project areas.
A few members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works are concerned about allegations of misconduct by Corps officials and have urged them to take steps to rectify public perception of USACE’s Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera announced yesterday that they will ask a National Academy of Sciences panel to perform an independent review of USACE’s study. Caldera also said that the Corps’ management practices are being examined.
"I assure you that when all the facts are in," USACE’s Chief of Engineers Lieutenant General Joe Ballard told the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, "the integrity of the Corps will be intact, and you will know that the trust you have traditionally placed in the Corps is well founded." Ballard also said that the review process, "has a series of checks and multiple levels of review. The draft Upper Mississippi Study has not yet been completed. It still faces an independent technical review, a minimum of two formal public reviews, a Washington level policy review, state and agency coordination."
USACE said that the screening process, such as the navigation study on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, discards most potential Corps projects. Further, only 16 percent of the studies have ultimately resulted in construction starts. The projects that make it through the screening process and are recommended for construction have provided a 26 percent average annual return on their investment, the Corps said.
Senator Offers School Construction Amendments
Senator Charles Robb (D-VA) will be offering amendments to authorize $25 billion in tax credits for school construction to legislation being marked up today (Feb. 25). The amendments will be made to S. 1134, a bill to permit tax free use of money from education savings accounts for private K-12 schooling. ASCE supports tax credits for school construction bonds, but has taken no position on S. 1134.
Jet Aircraft Exhaust May Affect Global Warming, says GAO Study
Exhaust emissions from jet aircraft have a "potentially significant" effect on the atmosphere and may be a serious source of greenhouse gases that are responsible for global warming, the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported this week.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said additional research is needed to determine the overall effect of commercial aviation on the environment.
"While aviation is believed to contribute less to global warming than some other human activities, it is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the world economy," the GAO report said. "Aviation emissions comprise a potentially significant and growing percentage of human-generated greenhouse gases that are thought to contribute to global warming."
The report was requested by Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), the senior Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over commercial aviation. In a separate action, ASCE recently was asked to provide Rep. Oberstar with two articles from the Society’s "Journal of Transportation Engineering" published in 1988 and 1994 that analyzed aircraft emissions and their effect on the environment.
State Legislative Update
ASCE continues to provide updates on state legislation affecting civil engineers as state legislative sessions progress. For more information on the following bills, or any other state legislative matters, please contact Austin Fulk, ASCE's Manager of State Government Relations, at (202) 789-2200 or via email at govwash@asce.org.
Alabama's S.B. 313 would ban the use of arbitration clauses in insurance contracts. This is relevant to any engineers whose insurance agreements with bonding agencies or other insurers require arbitration of disputes. If insurers are not allowed to arbitrate disputes, all disputes could be pushed into court with potentially extremely high litigation costs.
The Ohio legislature recently approved a plan to spend nearly $2.4 billion over the next 13 years on school renovation and construction. The money will come from over $10 billion that the state will receive as the result of the national settlement of state lawsuits against tobacco companies.
On February 18, the Virginia legislature gave final approval to S.B. 177, which holds owners of small private sewage treatment facilities criminally liable for contamination caused by their plants ceasing to operate. The bill was passed in response to the spillage of untreated sewage from a plant that went out of business and failed to implement a closure plan to deal with the untreated sewage. Previously, liability only applied to plants that treated more than 40,000 gallons of sewage a day.
