Hold on to your pocketbooks. Another giant federal boondoggle is on the way. The Water Resources Development Act is a massive multi-billion-dollar piece of proposed legislation on water matters that the U.S. Senate should take up later this month. If approved in its current form, it would continue a reign of harmful national environmental projects by providing more funding for a federal bureaucracy of bureaucracies -- the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

For this somewhat obscure federal agency, the bill pushes business as usual. In order to keep $14 billion in proposed funding, it would dole out a little pork in one congressional district and a few projects in another across the nation. In the end, it calls for pushing enough local projects to get support to fund often unnecessary, but massive projects in other states.

For example, while the current proposal includes $39 million to tear down the Grace and Pearman bridges over the Cooper River, it also includes a controversial $1.8 billion -- yes, billion -- in funding to expand the seven upper Mississippi River and Illinois River locks. Why? The Corps wants to improve river navigation upstream, despite opposition by environmental and taxpayer groups and a finding by the National Academy of Sciences that the project is unnecessary. The Corps contends the project is needed to avoid congestion from projected major increases in barge traffic, even though actual barge traffic has been declining or flat for the past 25 years.

This kind of fiscal recklessness of paying for projects that aren't needed is typical of what goes on with the Corps. A steady stream of studies from the Academy, the General Accounting Office, the Army Inspector General, other federal agencies and independent experts reach the same conclusion -- the Corps' projects are often flawed and the agency has fundamental problems, including:

-- An institutional bias toward construction of large-scale projects that degrade natural processes;

-- A distinct deficit of accountability to the public for reliable project planning or project performance;

-- A lack of adequate environmental protections; and

-- A failure to plan and implement required mitigation for damage its projects inflict on wildlife habitat.

What's needed are real reforms to ensure South Carolina taxpayers aren't subsidizing questionable projects in other states. U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint could be champions on real Corps reform. DeMint, for example, has an amendment that would address the $58 billion, 40-year backlog of authorized but unconstructed Corps projects, many of which are based on outdated, faulty assumptions and need to be dropped in favor of contemporary needs. Both senators could support the bipartisan Corps of Engineers Modernization and Improvement Bill introduced by Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold that would put the agency on the right track. The measure would revise how the Corps plans for and approves projects, calls for an independent review of expensive or controversial projects and holds the agency to the same mitigation standards as the private sector.

The current Water Resources Development proposal headed for the Senate floor represents a sham of reform. Unless the Senate holds Corps' funding and projects to the fire, the agency will continue down the same path of environmental destruction and fiscal waste it has been on for years. Without real reforms, the Corps will keep planning and implementing projects that drain hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands, narrow and disrupt rivers, and destroy valuable coastal habitats.

The Army Corps of Engineers has a real role to play to restore and protect major waters in South Carolina and across the nation. It has a place in promoting science-based water infrastructure projects. But its current zealous construction program isn't the way to go. Instead, Congress has a unique opportunity to set a new course for the Corps by adopting the reforms proposed by Sens. McCain and Feingold. For future generations, that's vital. Let's not mortgage their future on projects we don't need.