When asked for a response to critics, the Corps this week issued a statement in which it acknowledged that over its long history, “there have been challenges associated with some of our projects. ProPublica, with its partner Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, has reported that the Corps knew since 1852 that levees force rivers to run higher and faster and yet persisted in using them for flood control. The Government Accountability Office concluded in 2006 that the Corps’ work was “fraught with errors, mistakes, and miscalculations, and used invalid assumptions and outdated data.” Three decades later, a Washington Post investigation found the Corps pursued “billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded water projects, many with significant environmental costs and minimal economic benefits.” In 1971, the New York Times editorial board declared “the American people are becoming increasingly fed up with the expensive, boondoggling, make‐work, environmentally destructive projects that to a large degree characterize the civilian activities of the Army’s Corps of Engineers.” The Oregon story is one example in a long line of Corps projects that have drawn criticism over the years. The Corps says it’s the best option for helping salmon while keeping dams operational for hydropower customers, boaters and other users of the Willamette systems - although many of those users say they would be fine with lowering reservoirs and curtailing hydropower if it helped fish. A recent scientific review concluded that the kind of approach the Corps is pitching in Oregon won’t save salmon but “only prolong their decline to extinction.” The devices are to be built on a massive scale never before tested, and the Corps estimates a single collector could cost up to $450 million. Salmon the size of baby carrots would be whooshed into it, trapped in tanks and trucked around dams on their migration to the sea. Central to what the Corps proposes is a pair of fish collectors, which the agency describes as essentially giant fish vacuums. Trouble is, that recovery plan is also based on assumptions that might not match reality.
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