This can't be what Donald Rumsfeld had in mind when he said "drain the swamp."

The New York Times' Jamie Glanz reports that a wastewater treatment plant intended to serve the entire city of Falljua is delayed three years and has cost the U.S. taxpayer about $100 million.  Supposed to be completed at the end of 2005, the project didn't even start until 2007. And U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker wasn't even told of the project's many problems, according to federal investigators.

The culprit? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The New York Times'  Ron Nixon reports that the Democratic-controlled Congress pledge to cut earmarks, the money tacked on to legislation by individual lawmakers for pet projects, is not being heeded. Earmarks in this year's labor and health spending bill making going through Congress ...

The New York Times’ Felicity Barringer reports on a struggle between the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers—and local citizens—on how to best use 67,000 acres of Mississippi Delta wetland. The Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of federal flood control projects, has proposed since 1941 ...

We can't say nobody warned us.  That's the key to preventive journalism, and one of the reasons Understanding Government will be giving away $50,000 to the best piece of preventive journalism published in the year-long period ending on June 30, 2008.  And there's no shortage of potential topics, as Alex Prud'homme's column in the New York Times makes clear:  even after Hurricane Katrina, few journalists are looking at the threat posed by America's aging network of levees and earthen berms.

In the 2006-2007 school year, the temperature in some of the District of Columbia's public school buildings sometimes hovered just above freezing.  The cause?  Broken boilers.  These weren't old, decrepit systems, but brand-new steel boilers in 55 schools that cost District taxpayers $80 million.  As David Fallis, V. Dion Hayes, and Dan Keating report in the Washington Post, by spending approximately $100,000 district-wide, the school system could have ensured the boilers' trouble-free performance.  How? 

One year and $72 million later, the Baghdad police academy is still a fetid mess, and once again it took a reporter to uncover malfeasance on the part of a U.S. government contractor.  And -- once again -- the Army Corps of Engineers is involved.  Maybe they should just give up and let somebody with a conscience take over.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is at the center of a rapidly deteriorating picture in the Florida Everglades, where a $8 billion federal program  aimed at renewing this unique natural resource has stalled.

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen has emerged as one of the few plain speaking officials left in government after the departure of Richard Armitage . . . his latest report shows that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not performed on a job related to flood control -- this one in Iraq.

The U.S. Army has awarded a $475 million contract to a British firm, Aegis Defence Services, Alec Klein reports in the Washington Post.  The contract, a renewal for the British firm, is for "intelligence services to the Army and security for the Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction work in ...

Michael Grunwald of Time sounds the alarm for New Orleans in his special report entitled "The Threatening Storm."  Unfortunately, the city could fall prey to exactly the same destruction it faced in 2005, because the government -- through the Army Corps of Engineers -- is getting ready to do exactly ...