YOUR TAX DOLLARS, BEAVERING AWAY. Years ago, I heard a professor of political science characterize the Army Corps of Engineers as a beaver bent on damming any stream capable of floating more than a canoe. That's a bit harsh, but the third report on the St. Lawrence Seaway catches a nugget of truth.

The balding, bespectacled and soft-spoken economist [Don Sweeney with the Corps] stumbled into big trouble with his bosses several years ago while working on a study of a proposed $1 billion Mississippi River lock expansion. When he told the Corps of Engineers brass that the costs of the navigation project outweighed the benefits, they ordered him to fudge the numbers so the bulldozers could roll.

Sweeney declined to play the good soldier. He was removed from the project and suspended for insubordination. But he blew a whistle that echoed into the nation's capital, where he ultimately was hailed as a hero who had finally flashed a bit of light on the inner workings of one of America's more controversial institutions.

That dodge of lowering the discount rate to reflect social priorities and including as many benefits as practicable just doesn't go away, does it?

"Corps officials and employees exerted improper influence over the economic study at issue and manipulated the cost-benefit analysis in order to justify the expensive extension of locks," Elaine Kaplan, boss of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, said in December 2000, after an investigation by the Army inspector general.

Furthermore, the investigation spawned by Sweeney's complaint revealed that the corps appeared to carry an "institutional bias for large-scale construction projects."

But why let mere economics get in the way of some creative beavering? The Seaway appears to have all kinds of potential for same. But on to the economics.

The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy's Jon S. Helmick, in a presentation to Congress several years ago, illustrated just how time-sensitive deliveries involving ships, trains and trucks have become.

He pointed specifically to Toyota Motor Co.'s system of delivering engines from Japan to a Kentucky assembly line.

"Upon arrival in a Southern California port, the containers are discharged from the ship and then loaded aboard an eastbound double-stack train for overland transport to Chicago. At the terminus of the rail move, the containers are pulled from the train and placed on a truck chassis for the final leg of the journey," he said. "The astonishing reality is that after 17 days in transit,
the engines arrive at the plant in Georgetown within pre-scheduled 15-minute delivery windows, at which time they are stripped from their containers and moved directly to the assembly line for installation."

This, of course, could not happen on a Seaway that is plagued by unpredictable weather and closed by ice each winter. And while it may be technically feasible to keep shipping lanes ice-free, the cost and environmental disruption in terms of flooding and erosion have to date made it a political impossibility.

Congress agreed that the potential expansion costs outweighed the benefits pitched in the 2002
reconnaissance report, and told the Corps of Engineers to drop its expansion studies.

And, contrary to what Richard Corfe, who heads the Canadian Seaway authority, the Seaway can be replaced.

"You can't build another six lanes of highway, and you can't build another three or four rail tracks to do what would have to be done," he says.

Let's take that challenge seriously. Head of the Lakes to Chicago, put back the second track on the Omaha Road as far as Camp Douglas and put back the second track on the Milwaukee to Milwaukee. Restore the second tracks on the C&NW freight and passenger mains from Milwaukee to Chicago or the second track on the C&NW from Wyeville to Harvard, Illinois via Madison. East of Chicago, there are plenty of downsized multiple-track mainlines with room to add tracks. Toledo to Albany on the New York Central alone has room for four most of the way. There's also space on the old Canada Southern along the north shore of Lake Erie for additional trackage. Could the Seaway be cost-effectively replaced by restoring the pre-1959 railroad capacity? Possibly. Would you want to put all of the Upper Lakes traffic in ore, coal, and limestone onto trains? Probably not. But the Upper Lakes traffic only hauls the current aquatic life around in ballast tanks.