Pollution, Floods Foreseen in Wake of Wetlands Plan : Environment: Two groups opposed to changes in the way such lands are defined say wildlife also could be jeopardized.

The Bush Administration’s proposed changes in wetlands rules could result in more water pollution and greater flooding, and it could further jeopardize endangered species, environmentalists said in a report released Thursday.

The study, financed by the Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Fund, goes beyond an earlier report by government experts that concluded that the changes would leave millions of acres of the nation’s environmentally precious bogs, marshes and swamps unprotected.

The wetlands guidelines, proposed by the White House over the objections of scientists in four agencies, would require that an area be saturated with water for 21 continuous days or inundated for 15 days to be considered a wetland.

Critics contend that defining wetlands that way would allow massive destruction of marginal or transitional wetlands. Although these lands are dry for much of the year, they provide critical habitat for migratory birds, function like great sponges to absorb water in time of floods and filter pollutants such as excess nitrogen from ground-water reservoirs.

The environmentalist study, conducted by 40 scientists, said the new wetlands rules would require billions of dollars to be spent on new water treatment facilities and cost additional billions in flood damage.

Besides endorsing earlier estimates that the Administration proposal could lead to the loss of half the country’s remaining wetlands, the new study concludes that the rationale for rewriting the wetlands definition was fundamentally flawed.

“Most importantly,” said Timothy Searchinger of the Environmental Defense Fund, the report’s principal author, the investigation revealed “direct, heavy, severe economic and environmental consequences.”

The debate over wetlands has escalated into perhaps the most volatile environmental debate, complicated by political and economic issues, of the Bush Administration. Its importance is increased because Bush pledged during the 1988 campaign that there would be “no net loss” of wetlands if he was elected.

The furor over the wetlands rules erupted last year when government agencies set out to update a 1989 field manual used to identify them. The Administration contended that the document would vastly increase areas considered to be wetlands.

But when the 1991 version was field-tested, it was almost unanimously denounced as unworkable by scientists in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Fish and Wildlife Service, Soil Conservation Service and Army Corps of Engineers.

The period for public comment on the new definition will end Tuesday, and under normal circumstances the EPA would be expected to make the proposed rule final. However, Administration sources said Thursday that the issue is certain to be reconsidered in an interagency setting, given the strong opposition from environmentalists and the government’s own wetlands experts.

In San Francisco earlier this week, EPA Administrator William K. Reilly acknowledged that he is uncomfortable with the proposal.

As president of the Conservation Foundation before joining the Administration, Reilly was one of the country’s foremost exponents of a “no net loss” wetlands policy. The emergence of the new definition, perceived as a triumph of agricultural and development interests over scientists and environmentalists, was viewed in Washington as a loss for Reilly at the hands of the White House Competitiveness Council, which is chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, and then-White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

In releasing the report Thursday, Searchinger and other study participants contended that the transitional wetlands that would be removed from protection under the proposed new definition are among the most valuable. They said these “drier” wetlands soak up floodwaters and provide habitat for declining populations of wild ducks.

Threatened and endangered species that would be further jeopardized by the proposed redefinition, Searchinger said, include the Louisiana black bear, the whooping crane and salmon of the Pacific Northwest.

Information gathered from 15 states showed that hundreds of species would suffer devastating effects. Included would be more than 100 species in Florida alone, 80 of them officially listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

After last year’s field-testing of the new manual, government scientists found that only four of 13 California wetlands studied met the new definition.

Estimates by the regional office of the EPA last year said 50% of California’s total wetlands would fail to meet the new criteria, including 75% of the seasonal wetlands around San Francisco Bay, nearly all of the Central Valley and mountain meadows and 10% of its tidal wetlands.

In Maryland and Virginia alone, estimates are that $1 billion will have to be spent on modifications of sewage treatment plants discharging into the Chesapeake Bay, largely to compensate for the loss of wetlands.

Peter DeFer of the Environmental Defense Fund estimated that it would cost $70 billion nationwide to build municipal water treatment plants to take over the nitrogen filtering role performed by wetlands.