The Army Corps of Engineers public relations staff quoted in the Enquirer's story, ("Environmentalists trying to halt Mill Creek work," July 28) provided inaccurate and misleading information. This is to set the record straight.

First, the Corps violated the Clean Water Act by bulldozing vegetation along both sides of Mill Creek for approximately one linear mile and by conducting major earthwork, including dredging and filling in the river channel, without installing any required storm water, erosion and sedimentation controls. The construction put a huge quantity of sediment in the river, polluting the water and harming fish and other aquatic life.

The Corps is not above the law. As soon as MCRP discovered these flagrant violations we reported them to Ohio EPA and secured an Ohio EPA investigation.

Second, the focus and intent of current Corps work is not to "deepen a stretch of Mill Creek at Salway Park to reduce flooding." The public relations staff's effort to put the best spin on the Corps illegal activities by claiming that the Corps is giving people long-awaited flood protection is outrageous. The truth is that the Corps has refused to incorporate MCRP's recommendation to create a compound channel along Salway Park that can conserve and enhance Mill Creek's storage capacity, reducing flood damages for downstream businesses located in the floodplain.

Third, the Corps annihilated a large native butterfly garden inside Salway Park, created and maintained by hundreds of students and civic volunteers over the past seven years. In addition to providing needed wildlife habitat and environmental education opportunities, the butterfly garden served as a native plant nursery for the city's Mill Creek Greenway Program.

The city installed tall fencing to protect the garden from lawn mowers, but not from the Corps. The Corps contractor removed a section of the fence and bulldozed the entire garden. MCRP is requesting that the city seek compensatory damages from the Corps to pay for the re-establishment of the Salway Park butterfly garden.

Finally, in addition to these immediate problems, there are other critical issues that need to be resolved. For example, the Corps intends to build a permanent maintenance access road inside the river channel, along the entire length of Salway Park. While driving trucks up and down Mill Creek may have made sense thirty years ago when the Corps expected to build a concrete channel from the Ohio River to the Butler County line, it is unacceptable by today's standards. Mill Creek is a valuable natural resource - not a service road. If the Corps incorporated MCRP's recommendation to create a compound channel, this road could be relocated to a floodplain bench.

The Corps is spending about $2.15 million in federal funding on this project, paid by taxpayers. There are some excellent ways to spend $2 million on Mill Creek, but this is not one of them.

Robin Corathers, Executive Director, Mill Creek Restoration Project