Bush Backs Wetland Plan in Nod to Environmentalists : Politics: The President calls for converting cropland in California speech. But he also backs a bill to keep water flowing to Central Valley farmers.

In an apparent bid to bolster his standing among environmentalists, President Bush announced Saturday that his Administration is moving ahead with a program offering cash incentives to farmers to restore cropland to its original condition as wetland.

Concluding a two-day visit to California, Bush said the state was one of nine included in a pilot program to restore up to 50,000 acres of wetland across the nation. The others are New York, Minnesota, Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, Louisiana, Missouri and Wisconsin.

The wetland plan was first disclosed in the President’s budget for fiscal 1993, which was proposed in February. But it attracted little attention.

Bush’s effort to spotlight the plan appeared to reflect a bid to court environmentalists, a constituency that carries more weight in this state than most others. Although Bush already has clinched renomination and is expected to easily win Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary, his general election prospects in California remain clouded.

Throughout much of his 3 1/2 years in office, Bush’s Administration has battled with environmentalists. He most recently found himself at odds with this group when the White House delayed until the last moment the announcement that he would attend the Earth Summit--the largest international gathering on the environment ever assembled--next week in Rio de Janeiro.

But while seeking to woo environmentalists on the wetland issue, Bush on Saturday also endorsed a California-related bill in Congress that many of them have opposed. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.), would provide a continued flow of subsidized water to Central Valley farmers. The measure was passed by the Senate over a competing plan to divert the water from farmers to wildlife protection.

The wetland conversion plan highlighted by Bush authorizes farmers to be paid up to $50,000 a year for restoring wetland that was converted to cropland.

Farming and development have reduced the nation’s wetland to an estimated 103 million acres. Wetland is an important resource for migratory waterfowl, water purification, floodwater retention and ground water recharge.

Earlier in the year, the Bush Administration’s wetland policies drew pointed criticism in a study financed by the Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Fund. The study said the Administration’s proposed changes in the definition of a wetland could allow massive destruction of marginal or transitional wetland, which, although dry much of the year, provides critical habitat for migratory birds. The ultimate result, the critics warned, would be to further jeopardize endangered species.

The wetland guidelines that came under attack were proposed by the White House over the objections of scientists in four government agencies.

The matter is a particularly sensitive one for Bush. It is a highly charged political subject complicated by economic issues and made all the more difficult because Bush pledged during the 1988 presidential campaign that there would be “no net loss” of wetland if he was elected.

The regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency estimated last year that nearly all of the Central Valley would fail to meet the new criteria.

Thus, the policy to which Bush sought to draw attention on Saturday represented a turn back toward protection of the ecologically fragile lands.

As explained by White House officials, a farmer owning five acres of wetland that had been converted to cropland in 1965 could work with government agencies to develop a restoration plan for the acreage.

If the farmer’s proposal is accepted, on the basis of the environmental benefit compared with the cost of returning it to its original state, compensation would be paid by the government to the landowner.

A more sensitive issue in the Central Valley, however, is the matter of access to massive amounts of federally subsidized water. The federal Central Valley Project delivers about 8 million acre-feet of subsidized water a year, most of it for irrigation.

Bush said he would veto a House bill to require that project water be available to restore wildlife and reclaim wetland. The Seymour bill leaves most authority over water sales to the federal Interior Department and local irrigation districts.