[Rhodes22-list] P-NO Water Flooding Back In: USACE

[Jim White]

Actually Bill
It's been my experience (at least in the last several years) that the USACE is a major factor down here in NOT allowing things to be built. Some of the permits I am working on are over two years old, and not approved. I have one client who has been going round and round with them for over nine years.
 
They work in conjunction with lots of other agencies, such as NMFS, USFWS, and others to ensure that the regulated community (us) is "in complience" with the plethora of regulations that justify their existence.
 
However, it has also been my experience that the USACE can, and does do just about anything they want to....if they want to generate dredge spoil and dump it on the private shoreline of the King Ranch, well, they are a federal agency (read: government) and will do so....likewise if they want to dump the same spoil on acres and acres of seagrasses which they make me mitigate on a 3:1 ratio if they even allow me to disturb it at all, they will, all in the name of "public good"
 
The USACE is just another bureaucracy that one must deal with in order to get something done that would be easier to do without the governmental interference in the first place.
 
We allowed the federal government to have the reach and authority it has, and it certainly didn't happen in the recent past, it is a situation that has developed over years of us citizenry being asleep at the wheel. We also have the ability to change it - it's called our voice and vote.
 
Just my lowly opinion.
Cheers
jw

Bill Effros <bill at effros.com> wrote:
Rik,

Not to beat a dead horse, but I just saw the water is flooding back into 
New Orleans again. 

Apparently the water never over-topped the levees in the first place. 
The last I saw, the levees were not built properly, and simply broke.

To me, and I think Brad, we can argue the merits of whether the levees 
should be there or not all day; but once that fight has been fought, and 
the levees are in place, it is the responsibility of somebody to ensure 
that the levees are built properly. 

I have long had a lot of trouble with the Army Corps of Engineers. As 
far as I'm concerned, it's a pork barrel outfit doing a pork barrel job 
with port barrel results. 

Sure, they have done some things well, even admirably. But you can't 
trust a word they say, because their ultimate goal is to just keep 
building, regardless of the merits of the project.

Pretty fiscally conservative, huh?

Bill Effros
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Jim White
Le Menagerie
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