Draft of Wetlands ‘Bible’ Released Amid Controversy : Environment: EPA Administrator Reilly seeks a compromise. Still in dispute is how much an area must be waterlogged before it is protected.

After a bruising internal debate of more than a year, the Bush Administration Wednesday released a draft of a revised “bible” formally defining the bogs, marshes, ponds and less conspicuous American wetlands to be given federal protection against development.

The document, designed to calm a raging controversy over federal wetlands policy, remains in dispute on at least one significant issue, but Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly told Congress that he hopes to see the wetlands “delineation manual” adopted by the Administration within days.

Once officially published, the document will be offered for public comment across the country before being turned over to a blue ribbon panel of experts for a year or more of field testing before being put into effect.

“The concerns we have been discussing have been narrowed sufficiently to give me confidence that we are a matter of days away from getting an agreed-upon document,” Reilly told the Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee on environmental protection, but he added that “a decision to release and then to publish the manual does not resolve all the remaining issues.”

Still in dispute is the duration and the extent to which an area must be waterlogged before it is defined as a wetland and, therefore, protected under federal clean water laws.

Under present circumstances, land saturated to a level within 18 inches of the surface for seven consecutive days during the growing season is considered a wetland. But Reilly said that on the basis of scientific and technical advice, he supports a requirement for 10 to 20 days’ saturation to the surface.

The debate over such issues has made the manual intensely controversial during the more than a year that it has been under development, with environmentalists charging that subtle definition changes could lead to the loss of millions of acres of wetlands across the country.

Over the years, the United States has seen the disappearance of fully half of its wetlands, which sustain a rich variety of wildlife, help control erosion and recharge underground water supplies. Although the rate of loss has diminished in recent years, nearly 300,000 additional acres still are being lost each year.

But the Bush Administration’s goal of “no net loss” and consequent enforcement measures by the EPA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers have created furious reaction from developers, agricultural interests and even cities.

With Congress called upon to renew the 20-year-old federal Clean Water Act this year, wetlands policy has become the epicenter of a furious debate between environmentalists and economic interests and between several agencies of the federal government.

Just hours before the EPA made public the pending draft of the new manual Wednesday, the Senate adopted by voice vote an amendment that would prevent the EPA from proceeding with enforcement actions based on the current manual after Oct. 1. Sponsored by Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La), it was opposed not only by environmentalists, but by the Administration, which contended that it would throw wetlands regulation into chaos and undercut development interests it was designed to help.

The House has pending a bill that would effectively remove the EPA from wetlands protection and separate wetlands into categories based on their value. A similar measure is expected to be introduced in the Senate today by Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.).

While the Administration has taken no position on the bills, Reilly told the Senate committee that he is opposed to the establishment of a wetlands hierarchy because “lower value wetlands would not be offered serious protection and might be written off.” It would send a message, he added, that “high environmental priority is not being maintained” in wetlands protection.