The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was ordered this weekend to cease work on a Mississippi River flood-control project in Missouri that would have cut the river off from its last remaining floodplain, devastated tens of thousands of acres of wetlands, and, um, not controlled flooding. Ordering the Corps to remove any part of the project built so far and restore the area to its historic condition, U.S. District Judge James Robertson wrote that “the Corps of Engineers has resorted to arbitrary and capricious reasoning — manipulating models and changing definitions where necessary — to make this project seem compliant with the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it is not.” We feel shocked.
