Environment, Science And Technology Medal Swimming Upstream

onald Sweeney knows the danger of wading too deep in the waters of the mighty Mississippi River. He's all too familiar with the way the powerful currents beneath the river's glistening surface can drive an unsuspecting traveler off course toward peril's edge.

Yet Sweeney, 51, a mild-mannered GS-13 economist living in St. Louis, also knows that with enough fight and determination even a slight diversion can alter the river's route.

In March 1993, Sweeney set out to study 800 miles of navigable waters stretching from Minneapolis to Cairo, Ill., where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet. The six-year, $26 million project was designed to estimate how much commercial traffic would flow down the river during the next 50 years and how much stress it would put on a system of 36 locks and dams. His study became a guide for a $1 billion Army Corps of Engineers construction project to add more locks. It is the second-largest project in the Corps' history.

"We originally scoped out to do what the Corps had always done-economic analysis that looked at one project at a time," Sweeney says. "As we progressed, looking at one lock and dam at a time it became clear that it was not suitable. You have a system of locks and dams. Arrival at one lock relies on and affects arrival at another lock."

By 1996, Sweeney and his team realized they had to change course. They turned to a new model never before used by the Corps or on a project of this magnitude. The idea was to study the lock system and all the alternatives available to shippers.

"What Don's model does better than the models we had been using previously is describe real-world behavior," says Richard Manguno, chief of the Corps' economics branch in New Orleans.

Sweeney found that the Corps' original model vastly overestimated the willingness of users to sit for literally hundreds of hours waiting for a lock to open.

Sweeney's model revealed that shippers were more inclined to find alternative modes of transportation. But those results could have sunk the Corps' massive construction project. So, Sweeney was removed from the project in the summer of 1998. Senior Corps officials tinkered with the numbers to come up with the results they wanted. But a panel of Corps economists reviewing the data questioned the results, especially because they were so different from what Sweeney had found.

Senior officials tried to pass blame onto Manguno, who succeeded Sweeney as economist on the project. They threatened him with disciplinary action if he didn't change the numbers.

"I had to stop this," Sweeney says. "In mid-2000, I wrote an affidavit with loads of background that the Corps had manipulated the numbers." Sweeney filed his affidavit with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates and prosecutes reprisals for whistle blowing.

In December 2000, the OSC referred the case to the Army inspector general, who, in November 2001, affirmed Sweeney's accusations. A separate report by the National Academy of Sciences also concluded that the Corps' data was flawed.

Corps officials did not comment for this story.

Sweeney's actions provoked debate in Congress over the Corps' approach to transportation projects.

"I like to say that courage is often the result of naiveté," he says. "I had no clue this would become such a big thing. I talked to my family about it. I knew my life would never be the same. I'm pretty sure I would do it again."