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NFC: Fw: SENATE APPROPRIATION RIDER WOULD BLOCK CORPS REFORM!





SENATE APPROPRIATION RIDER WOULD BLOCK CORPS REFORM!

We need your help NOW to stop an amendment attached to the 
FY’01 Senate Appropriations Bill for Agriculture and Rural 
Development. The rider would block much-needed reform of 
the Army Corps of Engineers.

Please call Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), Ranking Member of 
the Senate Appropriations Committee, and urge him to vote 
against the anti-Corps reform rider. Senator Byrd’s number 
is 202-224-3954.

Key points about the rider:
1) It offends the constitution because president is 
supposed to control agencies, especially military branches;
2) The absence of oversight allows Corps to bend the rules 
to justify wasteful, environmentally destructive projects;
3) We need to reform the Corps to make projects are 
economically justified and that environmental impacts are 
adequately assessed and mitigated; 
4) The rider violates federal statutes making Asst. 
Secretary of Army the boss of Chief of Engineers; and 
5) The rider goes overboard – it would block Corps reform 
forever.

The rider -- Sec.3102 attached to the Senate Agriculture 
funding bill for fiscal year 2001 – reads: "None of the 
funds made available in this or any other act may be used 
to restructure, reorganize, abolish, transfer, consolidate, 
or otherwise alter or modify the organization or management 
oversight structure, existing delegations or functions or 
activities applicable to the Army Corps of Engineers."

To see testimony offered by Scott Faber before the Senate 
Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation 
and Infrastructure, visit 
http://www.amrivers.org/corpsreform.html

Background:
In mid-February, newspapers including the Washington Post 
reported that the chief economist on the seven-year, $50 
million study about whether to expand barge facilities on 
the Upper Mississippi River had filed an affidavit saying 
he and others had been ordered to cook the books to justify 
the project. A week later, other documents came to life 
showing that top officials had launched an effort to grow 
the Corp budget by $2 billion by aggressively approving new 
projects in a strategy that was unknown to civilian 
overseers. For more information, visit 
http://www.amrivers.org/corpsreform.html 
 






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