Wetlands May Face a Long Dry Spell : Senate wades in with pernicious legislation

As part of its relentless drive to undo sound and longstanding environmental protections, the House of Representatives in May passed a major rewrite of the 1972 Clean Water Act. The bill did substantial mischief to wise rules that have doubled the number of American lakes and rivers that provide safe fishing or swimming. Now in the Senate there is a proposal that would do as much damage as the House measure, specifically to the nation’s wetlands--tidelands, swamps and marshes.

Sens. J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat, and Lauch Faircloth, a Republican from North Carolina, are the authors of S 851, which would impose a narrow, new definition of protected wetlands.

The bill, which will be heard this week in a Senate subcommittee that Faircloth chairs, would have the effect of lifting federal limits on development for most wetlands and permitting dredging and filling. As a result, many wetlands might be turned into sites for farms, factories, businesses or homes, largely without federal oversight.

NO TIME FOR SILENCE: Moderate Sen. John Chafee, (R-R.I.), who heads the powerful Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has kept a low profile on the Johnston-Faircloth proposal. He should speak out on this legislation as forcefully as he has on other water quality issues, and his committee should defeat it.

If implemented, the bill will hit hard at wetlands in otherwise arid urban areas across California. Most of those urban wetlands, like Bolsa Chica in Orange County, Ballona in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Baylands, are behind man-made levees or dikes, and for that reason they would no longer be protected.

The legislation would be particularly pernicious in Southern California because of the nature and scarcity of wetlands here. Federal protection would remain only if the ground stayed saturated at the surface for 21 consecutive days; this stringent definition would exclude most wetlands in this region and indeed throughout the country.

Other provisions would permit streams with flows of up to five cubic feet per second to be filled in. That may not sound like much water lost, but the consequences would be enormous. Streams with this flow rate generate 3.2 million gallons of water daily, an amount that would supply 10 families of four for a year.

Worse still, despite worthy calls by many Republicans to base environmental regulation on sound scientific research, not environmental hysteria, the provisions of this bill repudiate the recommendations of a panel of prominent wetlands scientists convened by the National Academy of Sciences. In a report issued in May, the panel called the legislation’s new definition arbitrary and without scientific merit.

CRUCIAL FUNCTIONS: Wetlands serve essential ecological functions like absorbing floodwaters, filtering pollutants and providing breeding spots for fish and water birds. The pressure for development in wetlands has increased in recent decades, and historically the loss has been dramatic--53% of the wetlands in the now 48 contiguous states since the 1780s. California alone has lost 91%, proportionately more than any other state. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been drained annually, despite federal and state conservation efforts.

The Johnston-Faircloth bill would vastly accelerate this process. This legislation could doom countless plants, insects, birds, fish and other creatures that can exist only as long as the wetlands exist.

S 851 is disguised as necessary deregulation. In reality, senators who support it will be launching a fire sale of an irreplaceable national resource.