The Army Corps of Engineers has completed reviews and will proceed with 163 of 171 water projects halted last month because of questions about how the agency determined the need for them.

The remaining eight projects will undergo further review, the Corps said in documents distributed to members of Congress.

The Corps is responsible for designing and building federal water projects, such as dams, river locks and canals. Critics say the agency sometimes attempts to justify projects by favoring economic benefits over environmental harm.

The 171 projects are congressionally approved but not yet under construction. The speed of the review — 2 weeks — troubled some critics.

Environmentalists, taxpayer groups and some lawmakers said that the corps had missed an opportunity to shore up its credibility.

The review began April 30, when the agency’s director of civil works, Maj. Gen. Robert Griffin, said the corps needed "a more comprehensive initiative to ensure that corps projects are a sound investment for our nation and are proposed in an environmentally sustainable way."

In mid-April, Griffin suspended a $311 million plan to dredge 103 mi. of the Delaware River because the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, was critical of the cost-benefit analysis used to justify the dredging.

Earlier, the National Academy of Sciences found problems with the analysis used by the corps for its $1 billion plan to enlarge barge locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers. An Army inspector general review of the project concluded three top corps officials, eager to please powerful Midwestern agribusiness interests, manipulated the analysis to justify the project. That report also found a Corps-wide bias in favor of huge projects.

The eight projects that remain under review are: Brigantine Inlet to Great Egg Inlet, NJ; Broadkill Beach, DE; the Brazos River, in Graham, TX; California’s Tule River and Llagas Creek; and three levee restoration projects around Sacramento, CA.

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