An op-ed in March 12 New York Times by the Secretaries of the Interior
and Agriculture.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's More Than One Way to Protect
By GALE NORTON and ANN VENEMAN
WASHINGTON — Every year, the federal government and Americans across the
country preserve, restore and enhance thousands of acres of wetlands through
cooperative conservation efforts, partnerships and voluntary programs.
Unfortunately, that's not the news that most Americans read about. Instead, the
focus has been on the wetlands regulatory program.
The debate is not whether to protect wetlands, but how. For the last 25
years, government officials and environmental activists have largely relied on
the Clean Water Act's regulations to protect wetlands. That focus has given
short shrift to the role nonregulatory conservation — the willing partnerships
between citizens and all levels of government — can play.
These programs — in which the government provides funds and technical
assistance to individuals and organizations for the rehabilitation of both
public and privately owned wetlands — have proved highly effective. In 2000,
the last year for which complete figures are available, 1.96 million acres of
wetlands were safeguarded and preserved through nonregulatory efforts. In some
cases, already protected wetlands were given further protection. In other
cases, entirely new wetlands were set aside.
For instance, more than 200,000 acres of wetlands in the Fish and
Wildlife Service's National Wildlife Refuges were rehabilitated. Two thousand
acres of wetlands were added to the refuges and 1.4 million acres of protected
land continued to be managed with care. Other public-private partnerships
created, restored or protected an additional 108,000 acres of wetlands.
What's more, these figures actually understate the total wetlands
preserved through voluntary efforts. For example, they do not include wetlands
restored or protected by private landowners working on their own — such as the
New England Forestry Foundation's
These figures also do not take into account the expansion in citizen
stewardship and cooperative conservation programs under the Bush
administration. These efforts accelerate wetland protection through
private-federal collaboration. For example, under the Interior Department's
Partners for Fish and Wildlife program, landowners restored 48,800 wetland
acres in 2001 and 65,000 acres in 2002.
President Bush wants to build on these efforts. The president's 2004
budget includes a $9 million increase for the partners program and adds $25.5
million to the refuge operating budget. The Agriculture Department budget calls
for a 72 percent increase in financing for wetland conservation efforts on
farms.
Last May, the president signed a farm bill that expanded the Agriculture
Department's
The Interior Department's Partners program typifies private-federal
stewardship efforts. These projects are modest in scale and voluntary. But
cumulatively, they add up to big gains for wetlands protection.
In
Of course, no single partnership will conserve
Gale Norton is secretary of the interior. Ann Veneman is secretary of
agriculture.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is a message
from the National Wildlife Federation.
Julie M. Sibbing
Wetlands Policy Specialist
National Wildlife Federation
1400 16th St. N.W., Suite 501
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 797-6832
fax (202) 797-6646
sibbing@nwf.org
>>> Malia Hale 03/11/03 10:15AM >>>
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20030310/localnews/1145085.html
Monday, March 10, 2003
States take over wetlands protection
Montana leans toward using existing laws
By FAITH BREMNER
Tribune Washington Bureau
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON -- One month after federal agencies announced they would
stop protecting a large swath of the nation's wetlands, few states --
including Montana -- are taking steps to protect these areas on their
own.
Budgetary constraints and a surge in anti-regulatory attitudes are
causing states to think twice about passing laws or adopting regulations
that would keep developers from filling in isolated wetlands, such as
prairie potholes in northern Montana.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 20 percent of all
wetlands in the lower 48 states are isolated, which means they have no
apparent surface-water connection to major lakes and interstate rivers.
States had two years' warning that the EPA and the Army Corps of
Engineers -- in reaction to a Supreme Court ruling -- probably would
stop protecting these wetlands under the Clean Water Act.
But many state officials who participated in a seminar on wetlands
protections late last year said their states are holding back from
adopting new regulations because of tight budgets and concerns of
alienating developers and landowners, said Cheryl Runyon, senior fellow
for the National Conference of State Legislatures. A recent NCSL poll
found that 33 states are facing a combined budget shortfall of $26
billion this fiscal year.
"There is a great concern about trying to build too large an
enforcement program," Runyon said. "(The states) don't want to come
out
looking like they have too strong of a hammer."
Jeff Ryan, water quality specialist with the Montana Department of
Environmental Quality, said he is not aware of any efforts in his state
-- by either the Legislature or state agencies -- to start protecting
isolated wetlands.
"(Montana) is a pretty conservative state," Ryan said. "I would
suspect
that a lot of our populace is not interested in any more regulation."
But a member of the Wisconsin Legislature said landowners and
developers would support state regulatory efforts if those efforts don't
unfairly take away their property and if they get something in return.
Neal Kedzie, a Republican state senator from southeastern Wisconsin,
sponsored a wetlands protection bill that unanimously passed in May
2001. The new law sets a 90-day deadline for the state to approve or
deny wetland development plans or they are automatically approved.
"This has to be a collective solution," Kedzie said.
For years, developers have needed a federal permit to disturb an
isolated wetland. Any intrusion had to be minimized and any wetlands
that were destroyed had to be replaced somewhere else.
But the Supreme Court ruled in January 2001 that the EPA and Army Corps
could not use the Clean Water Act to stop an Illinois garbage company
from destroying an isolated wetland in an old gravel pit. The court said
in its 5-4 opinion that the fact that migratory birds use the body of
water could not be the sole basis for determining the gravel pit wetland
is part of interstate commerce and therefore protected under the act.
Last month, the federal agencies announced they would no longer protect
isolated wetlands whose only link to interstate commerce had been
migratory birds. Isolated wetlands that have other links to interstate
commerce are still federally protected, but it's not known how many fall
into that category.
The agencies also announced they plan to review and possibly clarify
all their wetlands regulations, raising fears in the conservation
community of an even greater loss of federal protections.
Isolated wetlands provide the same benefits as their larger
counterparts -- they recharge groundwater, soak up floodwaters, filter
out pollutants and provide habitat for wildlife. Because they're
isolated, many of these wetlands -- especially in the arid West -- are
important resting and feeding spots for migrating birds. The Fish and
Wildlife Service estimates that up to 43 percent of the nation's 1,262
threatened and endangered species rely directly or indirectly on
wetlands for their survival.
Before the Supreme Court decision on isolated wetlands, only 15 states
had their own laws and regulations specifically protecting these
wetlands. Since then, two others -- Wisconsin and Virginia -- took
action to protect them.
Western states like Nevada, Idaho and Montana are leaning toward using
existing state water-quality protection laws and regulations to protect
their isolated wetlands, although the laws don't specifically mention
wetlands. These laws typically prohibit developers from dumping sediment
or debris into state waters.
"It hasn't been used in this context before," said Tom Porta, bureau
chief for the Nevada Division of Water Quality Planning. "The way I read
the regulation, if we found somebody who decided to go off and fill in
some wetland, the potential is there to use it."
One hitch with a similar Montana law is that it would protect only
inundated wetlands. It would not protect wet meadows that have all the
characteristics of wetlands, or wetlands that dry out late in the
summer, Ryan said.
If the state decides to use the Montana Water Quality Act to protect
its isolated wetlands, it would have to create a new permit process to
replace the federal one, which would take time and money, he said.
Recent efforts to pass laws in the South Carolina and Illinois
legislatures to protect wetlands failed. The South Carolina Department
of Environmental Control is trying to put together new regulations using
laws that are already on the books. The South Carolina Legislature must
ultimately approve those regulations.
The speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives is sponsoring
mediation in the hopes of coming up with legislation this year that both
environmentalists and developers will support.
Illinois developers opposed a bill introduced in their legislature last
year because they were brought into the process late and had too many
unanswered questions, said Alec Messina, general counsel for the
Illinois Environmental Regulatory Group, a trade association affiliated
with the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
Messina said his group supports having the state regulate these
wetlands and is hopeful a bill will pass this year.
"We have always recognized there is sound environmental imperative for
regulating these wetlands," Messina said. "It's a matter of how do we
do
it and what makes sense."
Faith Bremner is a reporter for Gannett News Service.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> The Muncie Star Press
>
> Wednesday, March 19, 2003
>
> Wetland bill called unintelligible
> By SETH SLABAUGH
> <mailto:seths@thestarpress.com>seths@thestarpress.com
>
> MUNCIE - A wetland protection bill adopted by the Indiana Senate on
> March 4 is full of gobbledygook and loopholes, according to a
> national non-profit organization that helps states regulate wetlands.
>
> "It looks good on the surface, but when you go through all the
> exemptions, it seems to exempt damn near everything," said attorney
> John Kusler, associate director of the Association of State Wetland
> Managers, Berne, N.Y. "It's what I would call one step forward and
> two steps back. There are a lot of minefields written into the
> legislation."
>
> At the request of The Star Press, Kusler reviewed Senate Bill 491,
> which passed 42-5.
>
> Sen. Beverly Gard, author of the bill, which the regulated community
> helped draft, disagreed with Kusler's conclusions.
>
> Kusler's organization drafted model state legislation, drawing on
> wetland laws from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Michigan,
> Maryland, Oregon and other states, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
> in 2001 that the federal government lacked authority to regulate
> isolated wetlands.
>
> That's supposedly the purpose of SB 491: to protect isolated wetlands.
>
> But Kusler said: "It's got so many qualifications on qualifications
> on qualifications, and it's got classes of wetlands and exemptions on
> classes of wetlands, I'm not sure the bill doesn't exempt more than
> it regulates. It exempts altered wetlands, for example. Almost all of
> Indiana's wetlands are altered."
>
> He also called the statute "extremely complicated" because of
> unintelligible technical jargon and references to other Indiana
> statutes.
>
> "I can't imagine anybody trying to read that statute who is a land
> owner, or your mother, or an attorney, and really understand what the
> hell is going on," Kusler said. "It has a lot of gobbledygook
but it
> has very little in terms of addressing the key issues that you need
> to address if you're going to have a coherent statute."
>
> The bill in no way resembles ASWM's model legislation, he said.
>
> "Even states with minimal laws, like Iowa and North Dakota, at least
> you can understand what they say," Kusler said.
>
> Gard, a Republican from Greenfield, said: "I disagree with him that
> it exempts darn near everything. I think if you look at the House's
> wetland bill, that's a much fairer statement about the House bill
> than it is about the Senate bill."
>
> She described her bill as a "relatively simple wetland policy"
taking
> up only 14 pages.
>
> "Maybe I've read this thing for so long," Gard said. "I've
looked at
> a lot of other states' wetland statutes, and it seems to me it's not
> nearly as complex as some of them, but I guess it just depends on
> your familiarity with it."
>
> One of the main goals of the statute is to create an understandable
> state policy on wetlands, Gard said, because "right now nobody knows
> what the state's wetland policy is."
>
> Contact news reporter Seth Slabaugh at 213-5834.
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
> Gobbledygook?
> Jon Kusler, a national expert on wetland statutes, claims the wetland
> protection bill approved March 4 by the Indiana Senate is full of
> gobbledygook. An excerpt:
>
> "Exempt isolated wetland, for purposes of IC 13-18, means an isolated
> wetland that. . .(5) subject to subsection (b), is a Class I wetland
> with a delineated area of one-fourth acre or less; (6), subject to
> subsection (c), is a Class II wetland with a delineated area of
> one-tenth acre or less. . .(8) (b) A Class 1 wetland is an exempt
> isolated wetland under subsection (a) (5) only to the extent that the
> sum of: (1) the acreage of the isolated wetland; and (2) the combined
> acreage on the tract of all other exempt isolated wetlands under
> subsection (a) (6); does not exceed two acres. (c) A Class II wetland
> is an exempt isolated wetland under subsection (a) (6) only to the
> extent that the sum of: (1) the acreage of the isolated wetland; and
> (2) the combined acreage on the tract of all other exempt isolated
> wetlands under subsection (a) (6); does not exceed one acre."
>
> Importance of wetlands
> Wetlands soak up storm water, act like rest stops for migratory
> birds, support hunting, trapping, fishing, bird watching and nature
> photography, and are home to reptiles, amphibians, insects,
> waterfowl, fish, beaver and other wildlife, according to the U.S.
> Environmental Protection Agency.
>
>
>
> Julie M. Sibbing
> Wetlands Policy Specialist
> National Wildlife Federation
> 1400 16th St. N.W., Suite 501
> Washington, DC 20036
> (202) 797-6832
> fax (202) 797-6646
> sibbing@nwf.org