We incorrectly reported Tuesday that another $20 million was headed to Fort Drum for construction projects.

The story, which was wrong in two major ways, was a combination of sloppy reporting on my part, and a confusing statement from the Department of Defense.

Here's what the release stated:

" The Department of Defense (DoD) announced today details of more than 850 facility improvement projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  The $835 million allocated to these new projects represents the balance of the ARRA funds provided to the DoD for construction and repair projects, and is in addition to the approximate $6.1 billion contained in the first infrastructure investment list announced on March 20, 2009."

That last line, "...in addition to," led me to conclude this was money added to the original round of funding announced last month.

But I didn't check, which is journalism 101.

As it turns out, this press release means nothing of the sort - all it means is that projects already announced are now being funded, which someone in Washington thought warranted a separate statement.

What's worse is - I noted that $18 million is headed for Wheeler Sack air base, based on the document, which referred to "Wheeler" air base.

It did not dawn on me that there might be another "Wheeler" out there, and - of course - there is. In  Hawaii, in fact. Not here.

So I was wrong, which meant we were wrong, since the story got repeated several times on air after I posted it to our web site.

My apologies for doing something that would make me angry if one of our young reporters did it. And I promise to remember the basics, next time out.

For completeness' sake, here's the original wrong story:

*****

There will be more construction and repair work at Fort Drum - a lot more.

The Department of Defense announced in March that $84 million would be spent at Drum on various repair and construction projects. The money is from President Obama's stimulus plan.

Tuesday, another round of projects was announced, totalling just over $20 million.

The great majority of the money - $18 million - goes to repair and modernize Wheeler Sack.

Another $2,573,000 will go to convert hundreds of oil burning furnaces to natural gas furnaces and to install keyless entry systems.

(For more detail on the first round of projects, see our story of March 20.)