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From www.kentucky.com
Sen. Rand Paul to hold up top Corps of Engineers nominee
By BRUCE SCHREINER — Associated Press
Posted: 11:16am on Feb 13, 2012; Modified: 12:15pm on Feb 13, 2012
2012-02-13T17:15:29Z
By BRUCE SCHREINER

Sen. Rand Paul signs copies of his book, The Tea Party Goes To Washington, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Ky., Monday, April 18, 2011. Photo by Matt Goins 11808 MATT GOINS LOUISVILLE, Ky. — U.S. Sen. Rand Paul wants to hold up Senate confirmation of the nominee for the top post in the Army Corps of Engineers to show his displeasure with its performance in Kentucky, where repairs on a dam at a popular lake have taken longer and cost more than expected.
The freshman senator intends to place a hold on the nomination of Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick to become the Corps' commanding general and chief of engineers, according to Moira Bagley, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Republican. A hold is a way senators can seek to block or delay floor action on a nomination.
"Sen. Paul has concerns about many things the Corps is doing - or not doing, as the case may be - and he is seeking answers and modified behavior instead of allowing them to continue harming families, businesses and communities," Bagley said in a statement.
Bostick, a deputy chief of staff for the Army, was nominated by President Barack Obama last spring for the top job at the Corps. Bostick had a confirmation hearing last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, but the panel has not voted on the nomination.
Maj. Gen. Merdith W.B. Temple has been acting commanding general and chief of engineers since last June.
Lt. Col. Marc Young, a Corps spokesman in Washington, deferred comment to Bostick's office with the Army, and a Bostick spokesman there did not immediately offer comment Monday.
The Corps has more than 36,000 employees and manages programs exceeding $40 billion each year. Its duties including operating more than 600 dams and maintaining 12,000 miles of commercial inland navigational channels and 926 harbors.
Paul has been frustrated with "issues handled by the Corps in Kentucky and elsewhere," Bagley said without offering specifics. Paul, a tea party favorite, is not a member of the committee reviewing Bostick's nomination.
One high-profile Corps project in Paul's home state has been long-running repairs to Wolf Creek Dam that impounds Lake Cumberland, the largest man-made reservoir east of the Mississippi River.
The more than half-billion-dollar project has included plugging fractures in a rock foundation. Federal officials warn that if the dam fails, it could flood communities down the Cumberland River in Kentucky and Tennessee, all the way to Nashville.
The southern Kentucky lake has long been a haven for boating and fishing, but its water level has been lowered about 40 feet below typical summer depths during the repairs, which began in early 2007.
The water level was dropped to relieve pressure on the seeping structure. The diminished lake level has resulted in a sharp drop in visitors, inflicting hardships on marinas, motels and other businesses.
Marina owner J.D. Hamilton, who represented local marina operators at a recent meeting that included Paul, is among business owners trying to tread water financially until the dam is fixed. He sees the senator's road block to Bostick's confirmation as a way to bring greater accountability to the Corps, which he accuses of being "tone deaf" to the hardships of area businesses.
Hamilton said his business was expanding until the repairs to the nearly mile-long structure began. Then he had to move his marina to higher water as the lake level dropped. Before the repairs, he was adding boat slips; now he has a 30 percent vacancy.
He estimates his losses at about $5 million, from diminished income and expenses to relocate. He took out a loan from the Small Business Administration to try to stay afloat, but said his business is "hanging on by a thread."
"Right now I am borrowing money from the SBA, one federal agency, to pay rent to the Army Corps on a lake that they created the disaster on," Hamilton said in a phone interview. "How much crazier can it get?"
Marina operators at Lake Cumberland make lease payments to the Corps.
Ed Slusser saw his marina go under. He poured his life savings into the business, and now he has lost his business, his home is being foreclosed on and he's trying to start over at age 57.
Slusser bought his Lake Cumberland marina in 2006, and business was so good that he soon borrowed another $1 million to add more boat slips to accommodate a waiting list exceeding 100 boaters. But he never put the slips in the water. He was soon notified that the lake level was being lowered, which left his marina "mostly dry and unusable."
He moved his marina about six miles away to higher water, adding millions in debt. But with the drop-off in lake visitors, his business never recovered. He obtained an SBA loan, but it didn't come close to covering his debts. His marina was sold at auction in April 2011.
Now, Slusser has moved to Bradenton, Fla. He mows lawns to scrape together money while looking for a new career.
He sees Paul's decision to hold up the confirmation as "the first positive step" to try to make the Corps more cooperative in working with business operators affected by its projects.
Slusser faults the Corps for improperly maintaining and monitoring the dam, saying repairs should have been made years ago.
"They mismanaged it, but why should we have to pay the consequences?" he said.
Marina operators still in business face two more summers of lower lake levels before the project's expected completion date.
The Corps said its original completion date was in 2012, but now it expects repairs to wrap up by the end of 2013. It hopes to start raising lake levels in the late winter and early spring of 2014.
Crews are making progress on repairs, said Mike Zoccola, chief of the technical design branch for the Corps' Nashville District.
Workers are focusing on a 450-foot section of dam that has been the most time consuming. The work is occurring along the dam's foundation near where concrete and earthen sections meet. Crews are installing a 6-foot-thick concrete wall to protect the embankment as a prelude to placing a barrier wall along the dam's foundation to prevent seepage.
Weather delays contributed to the project's extension, but mostly it's due to the complexity of the work, Zoccola said.
"It's not a typical construction project," he said. "We are working on an active dam, they are excavating down through this dam and into its foundation. So the safety of the dam and the protection of the downstream community is the overriding concern. We have not done anything that could jeopardize that dam and make things worse than the problem we're trying to fix."
As the project has taken longer, the cost has risen. The original estimate was $308 million; now it's $584 million.
The Corps said part of the reason is that repairs to the barrier wall and foundation cost more than expected.

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