Crossroads: Congress, the Corps of Engineers and the Future of America's Water Resources

Crossroads is a culmination of two years of exhaustive research. We have conducted scores of interviews, immersed ourselves in the Corps' planning guidance and regulations, engaged in the decision-making process for many of projects discussed, researched numerous historical documents, and consulted with dozens of experts within and outside the federal government on a wide-range of water resources issues. Crossroads documents and chronicles significant problems throughout the Corps' civil works program, their economic and environmental toll, and illustrates how these problems prevent the Corps and its thousands of dedicated public servants from meeting the nation's true water infrastructure needs. In addition, Crossroads identifies the 29 most threatening and wasteful Corps projects in the country. Collectively and individually, these projects demonstrate why the need to reform the Corps could not be more urgent. All of these projects must be stopped. This report ranks the 14 most urgent threats among these wasteful projects in terms of their cost to federal taxpayers, harm to natural resources, and imminent critical junctures in planning, construction or operation.