As it was, the cost of the unbuilt Westway totaled over I200 million in planning, studies, lawsuits, and other fees, including an $8omillion check that President Reagan released for New York State to buy the rightofway from the city, which was never retrieved by the federal government, but which laid the groundwork for the Hudson River Park Trust. The battle of Westway ended in the courtroom, as the same judge, Thomas Griesa, who had decided that the proposed highway did not present an additional airpollution threat, ruled that it might endanger the eiy, sleek, and muscular, striped bass love to hunt by sewage outfalls, enjoy bumping and har О и was ng commercial divers, and weigh anywhere from twenty to sixtv pounds. . . ." (Anne Matthews, Wild Nights) striped bass. Judge Griesa twice revoked the Army Corps of Engineers> landfill permits, in 1982 and 1985. And he did so, a reading of his brisk scathing 1985 decision suggests, in part out of annoyance with the Corps's militarybureaucratic style, which he took to be evasive, bumbling, an(j dishonest. Here we need to consider the internal culture of the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps likes to build-it has an ethos sympathetic to large construction projects. Environmentalists had long felt that the Corps was reluctant to enforce antipollution statutes; its tendency was to stonewall the public and show obeisance to top industry officials. At times a cozy revolvingdoor employment policy existed between its officers and large contractors. In the matter of Westway, appearances were not helped when, in 1982, the Corps's district engineer, Colonel Walter Smith, after having decided that no new fishsampling program in the Hudson would be necessary and that he was ready to grant a landfill permit, was discovered to have been seeking employment with the main engineering consultant for Westway. Colonel F. H. Griffis was appointed to replace the retiring Colonel Smith as New York district engineer, and Griffis recommended a two winter sampling study. But the Corps's problems with Judge Griesa did not end there. He found it in violation of the Clean Water Act because "the Corps simply ignored the views of sister agencies that were, by law, to be accorded great weight," acting instead "from an almost fixed predetermination to grant the Westway landfill permit." (The sister agencies he was referring to were the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, all of whom had submitted objections to the landfill permit.) The judge criticized not only the Corps, but the Federal Highway Works Authority and the State Department of Transportation for their skimpy recordkeeping, and their inadequate public disclosure of materials detrimental to Westway. Finally, Judge Griesa went toothandnail after discrepancies between the Corps's preliminary environmental impact statement, which had found "significant" use by young striped bass of the interpier area, and the final environmental impact statement, which dismissed possible harmful effects of the project on the fish as "minor.