There are a lot of government agencies that have extensive experience in worthwhile environmental works projects such as habitat restoration, wildlife preservation, wetlands management and the like: The Forest Service and the Parks Service, obviously, as well as the NOAA, the BLM and the Bureau of Reclamation. The Corps of Engineers, on the other hand, is not really one of them; their specialty is building military-style fortifications and earthworks along mititary-style protocols, i.e., clear-cutting and bulldozing, so turning them loose in ecologically sensitive open space (near a bird sanctuary, no less) without any oversight or outside review (from local environmentalist/preservationist groups, for example) is a really good way to turn an environmental reclamation into an environmental disaster.
Naturally, it's only a failure of public relations:
Army Corps Deputy District Commander Alexander Deraney admitted that "somehow, we did not clearly communicate" to environmentalists and community groups.---Baron V
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