A reservoir near Fort Pierce probably needs only minimal repairs, the Army Corps of Engineers said Friday - not the millions of dollars that water managers call necessary to fix flaws in design and construction.

Repairs at the Ten Mile Creek reservoir could include replacing about 600 square feet of a soil-cement mixture that hasn't hardened properly on the side of a levee, corps construction and operations chief Alan Bugg said.

On the other hand, he said, the mixture could "heal itself."

Bugg said the corps already has repaired erosion undermining part of the levee and that the gouges never were as large as the South Florida Water Management District portrayed them at a meeting Wednesday.

Meanwhile, he said the district had solved a drainage problem that had let rain carve gullies into the levee's outer slope. And Bugg said the corps hasn't found anything to confirm the district's argument that crews improperly built the levee from a hodgepodge of leakproof clay and porous sand, rather than blending them.

"We're not quite sure what they're talking about," Bugg said.

Still, he said the corps could revise its thinking after looking into the complaints. The corps also will consider the district's call for the levees to be upgraded to post-Hurricane Katrina safety standards.

Nobody should think the agencies are feuding, Bugg said, despite the nearly 20 months that have passed since the corps finished the $34 million project. On Thursday, the district's board voted to hand it back to the corps.

"This is like any other project," Bugg said. "We have issues. We have a process for working out those issues."

Still, the impasse has puzzled some people familiar with the agencies' six-decade-old partnership in Florida.

"Given all the time this has been sitting there festering, why didn't anyone sit down and talk about this?" retired corps Col. Terry Rice asked after watching the agencies debate the project Wednesday. "It looked like the first time this was being discussed."

George Horne, a district deputy executive director, told his agency's board that the 550-acre reservoir needs as much as $13 million in repairs and upgrades. That includes $1 million to fix leaks in the earthen levee and $4.5 million to install a hardened wall to prevent future leaks.

The corps couldn't offer cost estimates of its own Friday. "We know it's not the $13 million," spokeswoman Nanciann Regalado said.

Other apparently unresolved questions include how much information the district has had about the project, which the corps mostly finished in February 2006. Among other issues, Bugg said the district knew as far back as 2001 that the corps was changing the reservoir's bottom elevation to cut costs.

That's true, Horne said Friday. But he said it took until this week for the corps to provide all the data needed to show that the changes wouldn't harm the levee's ability to withstand hurricane-driven waves and sloshing.

Without the numbers, he said, the district couldn't take responsibility for ensuring that the reservoir would meet even pre-Katrina standards.

"If the bank tells you your bank account is OK but you can't see the numbers, you're not going to be very happy," he said.

Horne said the district also is willing to reconsider its cost estimates once it receives more information. "The Corps and our staff are reviewing all the info, and all issues will be discussed," he wrote in an e-mail Friday.