Wetlands replacement inadequate, study saysCopyright 2001 Contra Costa Times
June 27, 2001
By Mike Taugher
TIMES STAFF WRITER
A federal program that allows developers to destroy streams, marshes and pools if they offset that damage elsewhere is failing to meet a national goal to halt the decline of wetlands, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences.
The report conclude that not only did wetlands acreage continue to decline, but also the quality of the nation's wetlands is deteriorating. That is because regulators are failing to record which values are being lost, such as wildlife habitat or water filtration, and requiring that those features be incorporated into new wetlands.
The report recommends major changes to the way the Army Corps of Engineers carries out its responsibility to protect wetlands by requiring what is known as "wetlands mitigation," where developers have to replace the wetlands they destroy.
"I think it's going to be particularly important for the Bay Area because there's so much development going on," said Victoria Alvarez, a member of the study team who works for Caltrans.
"If the report's recommendations are implemented, it will result in a net benefit to wetlands in the Bay Area," Alvarez said.
Despite former President Bush's pledge in 1989 that there would be "no net loss" of wetlands, those areas -- which include marshes, vernal pools, ponds, streamside zones and other wet areas -- continue to be lost, albeit at a rate that is far lower than the loss recorded in the 1970s and 1980s.
"The Army Corps doesn't do a very good job of protecting wetlands in the first place, and, when it comes to the mitigation side of it, they're not doing a good job there, either," said Ed Hopkins, the Sierra Club's environmental quality program director.
"The report validated a lot of our feelings about wetlands and wetlands mitigation," he said.
By the time Bush had pledged to halt the decline of wetlands, the nation had already lost more than half of its wetlands and California had lost a whopping 90 percent of its wetlands, mostly to agriculture, the report said.
Now, the primary threat is development, and builders in the East Bay who want to build a subdivision of any size are almost certain to need a wetlands permit, said Guy Bjerke, vice president of the Home Builders Association of Northern California.
Bjerke said that since the bulk of the destruction to wetlands has already taken place, the burden to protect them is unfairly falling on those who want new projects.
"The home buyer ... in a new subdivision probably doesn't care that much about wetlands," Bjerke said. "If wetlands are so important, put it in the defense budget."
Typically, a builder or anyone who wants to carry out an activity that would dredge or fill waters, which means anything down to a small temporary pool, is required by the Clean Water Act to get a permit from the Corps. Even activities that result in sand or dirt washing into waters are covered by those regulations.
The Corps says that on average, it is requiring developers and other permittees to replace every acre of destroyed wetlands with 1.8 acres of new wetlands.
That would suggest that wetlands acreage is growing, but other evidence reviewed by the NAS panel said otherwise.
"The Corps is suggesting on paper that's what's happening. The committee wasn't convinced that's what was really happening," said Suzanne van Drunick, who directed the study for the academy.
In diplomatic tones, the report says the Corps does not do a good job of designing effective wetlands replacement plans, does not make sure that those plans are actually followed and has no way to ensure the wetlands last, all to the detriment of the places that filter fresh water, recharge groundwater, attenuate flooding, provide wildlife habitat and stabilize shorelines.
For example, the panel visited an artificial "wetlands" in Irvine that was fed by PVC pipe. The pipe was filled with dirt and cracked, and the wetlands was dried out, van Drunick said.
"We were careful not to be too harsh on the Corps," she added. "We tried to make it a constructive report."
Saying it was restricted because the Corps does a poor job of tracking wetlands mitigation, the scientific panel was forced to rely heavily on studies that focused on particular regions around the country.
"We were severely hampered by the fact there is no data set," van Drunick said. "The general trend of all of those studies is that the mitigation is not always done and those that are aren't done correctly."
One problem for the Corps is that it lacks enough funding to effectively police the wetlands mitigation program, and that the agency's headquarters has made enforcement a low priority, she said.
"We would love to have additional resources to do more (enforcement)," said Donna Shepard, spokeswoman for the Corps' San Francisco division, which covers the western portion of the East Bay.