Laptop Battery It was 20 years ago that Congress first approved a plan to deepen the Delaware River's main shipping channel by 5 feet. Then the questions came. Many were environmental.
The Army Corps of Engineers plan to deepen the Delaware River has hit another logjam in the form of an appropriations bill. The Corps has been given a only $9 million for the Delaware Main Channel New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania Project by the U.S House of Representatives Energy and Water Conference, according to U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews, Dist., of Haddon Heights, a staunch opponent to the dredging project.
Thinkpad Monday, August 25, 2003 Isn't the river bottom filled with toxins that are best left alone? Why are most of the dredge spoils to be dumped in New Jersey? Would the project harm birds, crabs, sturgeon and other wildlife?
Her comments were echoed throughout the night. It is an issue that state environmental officials must resolve as they review the permit request, said Kevin C. Donnelly, state director of water resources. Project manager Stan Lulewicz said the liability issue would be spelled out in an agreement being negotiated between the corps and the DRPA. That agreement would be finalized only after the corps obtains Delaware environmental permits to proceed with dredging.
Microsoft Some were political. Would Pennsylvania benefit disproportionately, as New Jersey lawmakers contend?
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Laptop Computers But these days, the question dominating the debate over the stalled project is economic. Would it pay?
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Laptop Computer Critics say it would be a colossal waste of money, and has become a case study in how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tries to justify costly projects with fuzzy accounting.
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Desktop Computer "We think this is a massive boondoggle," said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1st Dist.), one of the main opponents of the project. "The only people it will create jobs for is the people who do the dredging. What it will leave behind is a mountain of debt, a mountain of mud and a series of environmental problems we will have to clean up."
Notebooks The Corps countered that exhaustive environmental studies have shown the project would be clean, and independent economic studies have shown it would be fruitful.
Lenovo In the project, dredgers would deepen the Delaware's 103-mile main shipping channel from 40 feet to 45 feet, allowing bigger oil tankers and cargo ships to approach Philadelphia and Camden.
Hard Drive Construction would take five years and cost $252 million, with another $150 million in maintenance costs coming over 50 years. The Corps has already spent $13 million studying the project, paying $7 million for environmental studies.
Travelstar About 65 percent of the funding would be come from federal tax dollars. The Delaware River Port Authority, the local sponsor of the project, is responsible for coming up with the rest from its own budget and from the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Gateway The project would enable Philadelphia to better compete with the Port of New York-New Jersey, which is being deepened to 50 feet. But for the Corps to justify the project, the net benefit must be to the nation, not to one particular region, according to Congressional guidelines.
Laptop Parts Most of the economic benefit the Corps cites would come in the form of smoother oil tanker traffic to Delaware River refineries owned by Sunoco, Valero, Phillips 66, Coastal Eagle Point and Motiva. The benefit to those companies would flow to other businesses and to consumers at the gas pump, the Corps says.
Software Of 10 proposed dump sites for the dredged material -- which some critics contend is toxic -- nine are in New Jersey. The dumping would ruin prime riverfront property and spread contaminants, Andrews and other critics contend.
Hard Drives Corps spokesman Eugene Pawlik said sampling has shown only tiny amounts of toxins would be in the dredged material, and the Delaware River Port Authority is seeking ways to distribute the dredged material more evenly between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Electronics These days, however, the economic argument has been central.
Canon Under the Corps' rules, every dollar spent on the project must reap $1.01 in economic benefit for the nation. Last year, with the Corps contending every dollar would return $1.40 in benefit, the General Accounting Office -- Congress' accountants -- reviewed the analysis and found the number was more like 50 cents.
Desktop Pc Six months later, the Corps released a new analysis that every dollar would reap $1.18. A former Corps economist, hired by environmentalists, claims that finding is also deeply flawed.
Desktop Computers The economist, Robert Stearns of the University of Maryland, said the Corps downplayed disposal costs of dredge spoils, failed to discount benefits to foreign companies, kept "independent" auditors on too tight a leash and made other mistakes.
Think Pad "Spending additional funds on an unjustified project makes no sense at all," wrote Stearns, who was hired by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and the National Wildlife Federation.
Repair Stearns, who previously worked on Corps projects as the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, said that in the latest economic analysis the Corps exaggerated economic benefits and downplayed costs in numerous ways.
Data Recovery In a small decision with huge implications, the Corps used today's low interest rates to determine long-term costs and benefits, even though its previous practice had been to stick with the higher rate used in previous analyses, Stearns said. The discount rate the Corps used in the past would have cut the benefit-to-cost ratio to less than $1.
Cisco The Corps has long been accused of justifying massive projects with unrealistically optimistic payoff projections, and the Delaware deepening has become Exhibit A for critics pushing Congress to reform the Corps.
Keyboard "They had to break their own rules, they had to count benefits that weren't there, they had to shave costs in a way that were not realistic," said Steve Ellis, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Monitor Pawlik said the Corps' use of current interest rates was in line with the GAO's recommendation to do a new analysis from scratch.
Desktop Pawlik did not confirm or refute that the independent reviewers were frequent Corps contractors, but did say the Corps is "confident that the work of the external independent review board was truly an independent review." The panel was made up of recognized experts in navigation, Pawlik said.
Infosys Congress first approved the project in 1992, after an early Corps analysis -- the first of three that have been done to date -- showed every dollar spent would reap $1.33. Pennsylvania lawmakers have been its main sponsors.
Refurbished Laptops The Corps, established in 1779, is responsible for building and maintaining more than 1,500 federal water projects, such as ports, inland channels, dams and eroding beaches. Though it remains under the supervision of the Army, almost all of its 30,000 employees are civilian.
Wipro There have long been calls to curtail Corps "mission creep." The movement gained momentum in 2000, when the Corps was found to have fudged numbers in a project on the Upper Mississippi, and an aggressive internal five-year growth plan for the Corps became public.
Lap Top Since then, Corps reform has been a hot topic in both the House and Senate. But the efforts have mostly stalled; the Corps is a major vehicle through which members of Congress deliver large public works projects to their districts. Hope for any reform this year looks dim, Ellis said.
Refurbished It is unlikely the GAO will re-examine the Corps' calculations, mainly because of its workload and prioritization system, according to Andrews and Ellis.
Memory Even if the economic analysis stands up, the Corps still needs permits from Delaware and New Jersey, and the Delaware River Port Authority has to coordinate local funding. How long that will all take is unclear, but dredging will definitely not take place this year, Corps spokesman Richard Chlan said.
Intel By Alexander Lane
Star-Ledger - 8/25/2003
Topic: Delaware Deepening
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