A bill on the hill

It seems McCain and Feingold are trying to help straighten out the Army Corp of Engineers with the Water Resources Planning and Modernization Act of 2006 .

The bill would specifically address the following:
* Require that Corps projects focus on national priorities for navigation, flood damage reduction, and ecosystem restoration.

* Require the Corps’ to modernize its playbook. The Corps project planning guidelines are more than 20 years out of date and have been consistently criticized by water experts and the National Academies of Science as needing overhaul to incorporate modern economic and environmental principles.

* Require independent expert review of proposed projects that cost more than $25 million or are controversial, to ensure that the Corps’ plans are based on sound economics and science.

* Require the Corps to comply with the same mitigation requirements that must be met by all other government or private entities when unavoidable impacts to rivers or wetlands occur in project implementation.

It sounds like a good idea to me - hope it works better than campaign finance reform, which still seems to be a mess. It will be interesting to see if this bill goes anywhere.