The Army Corps of Engineers has placed before President Bush a choice of supporting relaxed environmental standards that the corps wants or the opinion of four federal agencies. He should review last year’s Pentagon assessment of the Corps and side with the agencies.

The Corps wants to ease rules established a year ago that protect streams and other wetlands. The rules went into effect in 2000 after a 1997 court ruling that said developers did not need to obtain permits to drain or excavate wetlands as long as they did not dump soil on the property. The result in the following two years was the destruction of approximately 20,000 acres of wetlands and 150 miles of streams. The Clinton administration last August passed new rules closing this loophole. Developers support easing these new rules; the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Office of Surface Mining all oppose the idea.

The proposed changes would give the Corps more flexibility in deciding when permits were needed, which under some circumstances might be an acceptable change. But the Pentagon report in December concluded the Corps manipulated economic data to justify a huge project on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and, further, found it had a systemic bias in favor of big projects, which allowed its budget to grow tremendously while keeping corporate friends happy. Now, just a few months after this dismal conclusion, is no time to give the Corps more leeway.

President Bush in recent weeks has appeared before a series of bucolic settings to indicate his support for environmental policies. It is encouraging that he has made the effort to show concern for national parks, but with the Corps plan he has an opportunity to preserve environmental policies that actually help the environment. Rejecting the proposed changes would give substance to the style of his photo opportunities.