From the D.C. office of the club.
With all of the unfortunate flooding that has been going on in your
states,
we thought it would be a good idea get a good message out to the media
by
submitting a letter to the editor to your local papers, highlighting the
importance of wetlands and the Wetland Reserve Program (which Bush has
zeroed out in his proposed budget), and how wetlands can help to reduce
the
severity of floods.
Please find below, a sample letter to the editor that you can feel free
to use,
if you feel that this is a good idea.
For more information on the Wetlands Reserve Program and how wetlands
help
to contain flood water, please visit our wetlands pages at
http://www.sierraclub.org/wetlands/, or go directly to
http://www.sierraclub.org/wetlands/reports/wetland_restoration/.
Thanks, and I hope that you find some of this information useful.
-George
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Sorvalis
Sierra Club's Environmental Quality Program
408 C Street NE
Washington DC 20002
(202) 675-6693
[log in to unmask]
www.sierraclub.org/eqst
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Editor,
One of the contributing factors to flooding in the Upper Mississippi
River
Basin is the destruction of wetlands. Wetlands act like a natural
sponge,
soaking up floodwater, then releasing it slowly back into the
environment.
When we turn wetlands into roads and parking lots, water has nowhere to
go
but to flood our homes and neighborhoods. An acre of wetlands can store
from one to five feet, or more than 1.6 million gallons of floodwater
and
studies show that wetland restoration could reduce 100-year floods by at
least 10%.
Restoring our wetlands to reduce flooding makes more sense than paying
billions of dollars in flood damages, crop insurance payments, and
building
more levees that clearly do not work. One program that has been
successful
in helping to restore and protect wetlands is the Wetlands Reserve
Program.
The WRP was created in 1990 and has successfully preserved or restored
more
than 257,000 acres of wetlands in the Upper Mississippi River Basin.
The
WRP helps farmers take out of production farmland that is otherwise
unsuitable for agricultural use because it is highly prone to flooding.
The
land is preserved or restored to provide critical ecological functions
such
as storing floodwaters, filtering sediments that cause pollution, and
providing habitat for wildlife.
Today, there are approximately 150,000 acres of wetlands waiting to be
enrolled in the WRP in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, and
approximately
500,000 backlogged in the United States. But despite this fact,
President
Bush zeroed out funding in the 2001 budget for this popular program.
This
is the wrong thing to do. We should expand, not cut this program to
protect us from floods and restore critical habitat.
If we really want to help the environment and reduce flooding, we need
to
expand the WRP to help stop the destruction of our wetlands.
(You may want to refer to the chart below and add in some facts from
your
state.)
|-------------+-+-------------+-+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-------+---------------|
|Wetlands | |WRP, EWRP, | |WRP and EWP|Total | |Avg.
| |Amount that
|
|Restoration | |and EWP Acres| |Acres |potential| |cost
for| |Could be
Paid |
|in Waiting in| |Enrolled* | |Backlogged*|flood |
|easement| |to Farmers
for |
|the Upper | | | | |storage**| |per
acre| |WRP
|
|Mississippi | | | | |(Acre-Ft)| |
| |
|
|River as of | | | | | | |
| |
|
|May, | | | | | | |
| |
|
|2000State | | | | | | |
| |
|
|-------------+-+-------------+-+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-------+---------------|
|llinois | |36,586 | |20,833 |62,499 | |$1,000
| |$20.3
million |
|-------------+-+-------------+-+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-------+---------------|
|Iowa | |91,026 | |61,400 |184,200 | |1,500
| |92.1
|
|-------------+-+-------------+-+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-------+---------------|
|Minnesota | |25,869 | |25,134 |75,402 | |382
| |9.6
|
|-------------+-+-------------+-+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-------+---------------|
|Missouri | |79,606 | |32,014 |96,042 | |855
| |27.4
|
|-------------+-+-------------+-+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-------+---------------|
|Wisconsin | |24,377 | |10,000 |30,000 | |900
| |9
|
|-------------+-+-------------+-+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-------+---------------|
|Upper Miss | |257,464 acres| |149,381 |448,143 |$1,009***|
|$150.4 |
|
|Total | |909,000 | |acres |a-f or |$1,000 |
|million|
|
|National | | | |570,000****|148 | |
|$559 |
|
|Total | | | | |billion | |
|million|
|
| | | | | |gallons | |
| |
|
|-------------+-+-------------+-+-----------+---------+---------+--------+-------+---------------|
Much of this acreage lies in the Upper Mississippi River Basin ?
Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
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