In a sort of bureaucratic version of the ancient dictum, “Physician, heal thyself!”, the troubled U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced a plan to cleanse itself from within. Its leaders, including Civil Works Director Maj. Gen. Robert Griffin, have unveiled a three-tiered program to improve the Corps’ economic and environmental planning by enhancing internal training, using nationally accepted economic models, and creating regional teams of specialists to work on complex projects. In recent months, the Corps has come under fire for sloppy, misleading, and self-serving economic analyses of its projects; its critics have included such heavy hitters as the General Accounting Office, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and internal Pentagon investigators. Not to mention environmentalists, who also question the current overhaul, fearing the Corps is just trying to look busy so that lawmakers don’t take reform of the institution into their own hands.
