Yazoo Pumps, R.I.P.? Pork at work...

[groovedaddy]

Stephen Johnson, the embattled career scientist who runs the Environmental Protection Agency, seems ready to defy Congress on an issue that his more politically connected predecessors ducked. Mr. Johnson has all but decided to cancel the Yazoo Pumps, a flood control scheme in the Mississippi Delta that is potentially the most environmentally destructive project undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers at Congress’s request.

Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor who once ran the Republican National Committee, may well use his party connections to try to persuade Mr. Johnson to back off. The administrator should resist this and all other entreaties to do so.

The cozy relationship between the Corps of Engineers and its pork-loving paymasters in Congress has produced many dubious schemes over the years, none as patently absurd as this one.

Billed as necessary to the Mississippi farm economy by its Senate champions, including the recently retired Trent Lott, the project envisions the world’s largest hydraulic pumping plant, costing about $200 million. The pumps would drain many thousands of acres of wetlands and hardwood forests so that a relatively small number of soybean farmers who already drink liberally from the public trough can plant more crops. The operation would damage two wildlife refuges, and, by destroying wetlands that filter out pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorous, would further degrade the waters of the lower Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/opinion/26tue2.html?th&emc=th