GAO Study Stomps Delaware Dredging Project - General Accounting Office criticizes the Army Corps of Engineers - Brief Article

National Wildlife, Oct-Nov, 2002

A recently released report from the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, should be another nail in the coffin of the misguided U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Delaware River dredging project that NWF and its affiliate, the Delaware Nature Society, have battled for years.

According to the GAO report, the Corps' economic justification of the project is fraught with "miscalculations, invalid assumptions, and the use of significantly outdated information."

"The Corps didn't even get the basics right, using incorrect distances and other information that could be easily found in any almanac," says David Conrad, an NWF water-resources specialist. "The Corps exaggerated the Delaware project's annual benefits by more than $26.8 million, and understated the project costs by more than $100 million. It is hard to believe there could be a more scathing indictment of a project plan."