Corps

NEW ORLEANS -- Six inches. After two years and more than a billion dollars spent by the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild New Orleans' hurricane protection system, that is how much the water level is likely to be reduced if a big 1-in-100 flood hits Leah Pratcher's house in the Gentilly neighborhood. Looking over the maps that showed other possible water levels around the city, Pratcher - who had 4 feet of water in her house after Hurricane Katrina - grew furious. By comparison, the wealthier neighborhood to the west, Lakeview, had its flooding risk reduced by nearly 5 1/2 feet.

Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest added his voice yesterday to the growing federal chorus opposed to plans to dump 18 million cubic yards of silt and mud from Baltimore harbor's approach channels in open waters near the Bay Bridge.Gilchrest, an Eastern Shore Republican whose district includes the land closest to the proposed dump site, called on the U.S. Corps of Engineers to tear up the draft environmental impact statement it released last winter and start over. Ultimately, he said, the corps should reject the site, a 4-mile-long area about a mile from Kent Island.

A south county citizen group, determined to block plans for a Safeway store in Deale, is still hounding the Army Corps of Engineers for a public meeting to allow community residents to voice concerns about wetlands protection and the threat of flood damage.South Arundel Citizens for Responsible Development (SACReD) opposes building a store and a shopping center at routes 256 and 258 because members claim it would destroy sensitive shoreline and create acidic runoff that could contaminate waterways.

A vocal southern Anne Arundel environmental group supported by an array of politicians is demanding that the Army Corps of Engineers re-evaluate the wetlands permit it has granted for construction of a Safeway store and strip shopping center in Deale.South Arundel Citizens for Responsible Development (SACReD) has also been pressing the corps for months for a public hearing to gauge community support for a shopping center at Routes 256 and 258.The corps, which oversees wetlands, has ignored the request, said Amanda Spake, president of SACReD, which fears that a Safeway would destroy sensitive shoreline and create acidic runoffs that could contaminate waterways.

Opponents of the long-contested plans for a Safeway strip mall in Deale are posting signs throughout south Anne Arundel County, stuffing fliers into grocery bags and making buttons in preparation for another battle.The Army Corps of Engineers has scheduled a public forum at 7 p.m. Dec. 1 at Deale Elementary School, and those opposed to the project want the community to be there. Corps representatives will explain its reasons for permitting the project at Routes 256 and 258."This meeting has been a long time in the making," said Amanda Spake, president of a South County environmental group that opposes the project.

An Army Corps of Engineers official told a community meeting yesterday that the corps will not revoke the permit it gave Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. six years ago to dump fly ash in wetlands in their neighborhood.Maj. J. T. Hand of the Baltimore corps listened as two independent engineers gave an hourlong presentation about possible health risks and environmental concerns, then said he "did not hear anything today that suggests we should revoke the permit."Asked later what it would take for the corps to revoke the permit, Hand said, "Maybe if somebody came forward saying there was a rise in cancer but I'm not going to second-guess a decision made six years ago."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is putting the finishing touches on the most expensive environmental restoration ever undertaken: a $7.5 billion effort to undo the damage the corps did decades ago when it drained Florida's Everglades.The wilderness that once was the liquid heart of Florida has been dying of thirst since the late 1960s, when the corps completed a 1,600-mile long network of canals that created cities and farms out of saw-grass marshes, but deprived the Everglades of its life-giving water.

U.S. Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest formally asked the Army Corps of Engineers yesterday to re-evaluate the permit it granted Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. to fill in several wetlands in North County's Solley community with fly ash.Gilchrest sent a four-page letter to the corps outlining his concern that BGE's fly ash disposal site on Solley Road could pose "risks to the environment and public health" by contaminating the water and the air. He said he came to...

NEW YORK - Accusing the Army Corps of Engineers of ignoring federal environmental law in a rush to begin a $60 million dune- and beach-rebuilding project on Fire Island, two biologists have resigned their government jobs in protest.The biologists, staff members of the Fish and Wildlife Department's regional office on Long Island, said the corps was withholding information about the project, which they said would damage natural systems, provide no proven protection against storms, and cost more than $100 million over its 30-year life when maintenance costs were included.

In an effort to cut red tape, federal and state officials announced yesterday that Maryland will be given greater power to regulate building or farming in the state's 600,000 acres of tidal and fresh-water wetlands.The Army Corps of Engineers has taken action that will allow the Department of the Environment to handle most of the 4,300 requests filed each year to alter wetlands, which soak up pollutants, help control floods and provide habitat for fish and wildlife.The action reduces the roles of the corps, which regulates wetlands under federal law, the Environmental Protection Agency and two other federal agencies in reviewing wetlands applications.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it will not issue a permit for a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal at Sparrows Point and a pipeline through Maryland to Pennsylvania until the project's developer has complied with federal wildlife regulations, prepared mitigation plans for wetlands that might be disturbed during construction and met other requests for information. The Corps is the second agency this month to question plans by Virginia-based AES Corp. to build the terminal and lay 88 miles of pipe to transport the gas. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to delay its vote on the project, scheduled for tomorrow, until concerns about habitats for the bog turtle and Indiana bat can be addressed.

A federal judge sentenced a Prince George's County man yesterday to serve two years in prison for filing more than $300,000 worth of false overtime and expense claims with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis sentenced Myron Price, 45, of Accokeek to two years in prison followed by three years of supervised release for making false claims for overtime and travel expenses in connection with his work as a physical scientist for the Corps of Engineers. The judge also ordered that Price pay restitution of $379,436.

WASHINGTON -- The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send Marines instead to Afghanistan to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials. The Marine Corps commandant's idea would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command. The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders.

NEW ORLEANS -- Six inches. After two years and more than a billion dollars spent by the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild New Orleans' hurricane protection system, that is how much the water level is likely to be reduced if a big 1-in-100 flood hits Leah Pratcher's house in the Gentilly neighborhood. Looking over the maps that showed other possible water levels around the city, Pratcher - who had 4 feet of water in her house after Hurricane Katrina - grew furious. By comparison, the wealthier neighborhood to the west, Lakeview, had its flooding risk reduced by nearly 5 1/2 feet.

A U.S. military investigation has found that the Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq engaged in "willful negligence" in failing to investigate a November 2005 attack by Marines that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis, including several women and children, lawyers involved in the case said. The report, completed last summer but never made public, also found that a Marine Corps general and colonel in Iraq learned of the killings within hours of the incident, on Nov. 19, 2005, in the town of Haditha, but did not investigate.

BURKESVILLE, Ky. --Below the Wolf Creek Dam, which holds back the biggest manmade lake east of the Mississippi, residents joke that they are not worried about a breach but sleep in life jackets, just in case. Above the dam, they jest that since the Army Corps of Engineers labeled the structure "high risk" in January and lowered the water in Lake Cumberland to 40 feet below its summer level, residents now have some of the best "mud front" property in the country. A nervous sense of humor has taken hold in this area, famed for its trout fishing and million-dollar houseboats, as worries grow about the dam, a mile-long concrete and earthen behemoth that is leaking and showing signs of age. "That's a lot of water," said Keith Riddle, the mayor and barber here, about the trillion gallons of water 10 miles upstream sitting behind the dam, enough to cover the state of Kentucky to a depth of 3 inches.

NEW ORLEANS, La. -- Most of the major breaches in the New Orleans levee system during Hurricane Katrina were caused by flaws in design, construction and maintenance - and parts of the system might still be dangerous even after the current round of repairs by the Army Corps of Engineers, according to a long-awaited independent report to be published today. "People didn't die because the storm was bigger than the system could handle, and people didn't die because the levees were overtopped," said Raymond B. Seed, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and the chief author of the report, in a briefing for reporters here.

When it came time for Jake Dove, a senior at the U.S. Naval Academy, to decide how he would fulfill his required military duty after graduation, there was no question about it: Marine Corps all the way. "In my eyes it's a perfect community," said Dove, an Annapolis High School graduate. "The idea of being a platoon leader in charge of guys that have done two, three tours in Iraq already, when I haven't been over there - that's an awesome responsibility. I'm eager to take it on." Despite a war that has entered its fourth year with mounting casualties and waning public support, more and more midshipmen at the Annapolis military college are volunteering for the Marines when asked to choose how they will fulfill the five-year commitment required of all academy graduates.

NEW ORLEANS -- One of the city's major levees failed during Hurricane Katrina because of a combination of factors that had not been anticipated by the Army Corps of Engineers when it planned the city's flood protection, according to a new report that the corps released yesterday. The report, based on the corps' own investigation of the levee failures, described a previously unknown set of circumstances during the storm: The floodwaters rising in the 17th Street canal sliced through the protective levee like a knife through a cake, sharply reducing the levee system's ability to resist the water's push.

When Lance Cpl. Edward Voumard, 20, signs off after his shift early Sunday morning guarding an entrance to the U.S. Naval Academy, he will be one of a handful of Marines who close the book on a 155-year tradition. Voumard, who has been stationed at the academy since completing initial training after enlistment, said he would miss Annapolis very much. As for the shift: "It's just another day," he said yesterday. Since just a few years after the Naval Academy's founding in 1845, Marines have guarded the military college and performed ceremonial duties.