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Comment by jingalings | Hacker News Reader

As a non-American, can someone explain to me why the army was responsible for this work? When does the normal tender/contractor process not occur? Is it a scale or political decision?

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The US Army Corps of Engineers is generally and historically responsible for waterway dredging and flood control. It's one of their core (peace-time) responsibilities. These are typically large projects that benefit the public good yet are rather complex and lack sufficient financial incentives for privatization. The wikipedia article [1] gives a general idea of how and when this came to be. (Canals.)

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_...

It's complicated. The Army Corps of Engineers has had a civilian mandate to support flood control prevention since 1917 [1]. Beyond that, they are also involved in large public works projects such as the building of roads and bridges, and Superfund clean-up sites. On top of this, they regularly receive large pork barrel grants from Congress that can siphon money into a senator's state or a congressperson's district. They do have a large contracting arm and are actually pretty well-regarded for their comprehensive procurement and management process for these large public works projects.

So it's scale, politics, and history/momentum at this point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_c...

A little pork aside, I wonder if they could be leveraged into a lot more.

Wherever infrastructure is done responsibly, it makes sense to invest it'd seem ...

> As a non-American, can someone explain to me why the army was responsible for this work?

Because...path dependency. The Army Corps of Engineers has long been responsible, largely, as I understand it, from mission following capacity rather than vice versa.

> When does the normal tender/contractor process not occur?

It can, but that process requires a government agency over the top, and the ACE is the responsible agency. They contract out work.

It is a bit odd, but the Army Corps of Engineers has historically always been responsible for a lot of maintenance of the country's rivers and waterways, dams, parts of the Great Lakes, etc. including flood control.

The Army Corp of Engineers can be viewed as the federal government's civil engineering service. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_En... for a good description.

They have a concept of “waters of the United States” where if it’s a navigable water it is federally managed and historically army cane first so their Corp of engineers are the ones who carry out the operations

As an American I know. These levees were built KNOWING that they sink at a mathematical formulate rate. This is FAKE NEWS. The 14 billion dollar cost is a cost rate over a decade or more, lets say 1 billion at 14 years long. This billion a year is the cost to keep adding on to the existing well made and constructed infrastructure.

Please don’t co-opt the phrase “fake news” even if you don’t believe what’s being said is an accurate portrayal — it disparages the news media by implicitly legitimizing self-serving uses of the term. Every time this phrase is used it hurts the fourth estate. The media gets things wrong sometimes, and we should hold them accountable but this isn’t how.

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