Posted by Jane Clark

The Bush Administration will soon finalize revisions to guidelines for
permits for building on wetlands. These "nationwide permits," used by the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, make it much easier for developers to build
projects that threaten or destroy wetlands. Preliminary indications are
that the revised permit rules would open the door to even more wetland
destruction.  Please read this background information in preparation for
telling President Bush that his administration should be doing
everything in its power to reduce the rate of wetlands destruction, while
encouraging wetlands restoration.


Background Information

Under the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction
over permits to dredge or fill wetlands. The Corps has authority to issue
individual permits as well as a broad array of "general" permits that allow
developers to conduct certain types of activities affecting wetlands. The
Corps uses general permits to "reduce the regulatory burden" - that is, to
essentially make it easier for developers to conduct activities that the
Corps judges to be similar in nature and to have minimal effects on the
environment.

A "nationwide permit" is just one type of general permit. It authorizes a
category of activities throughout the nation and is valid only if the
conditions applicable to the permit are met. There are about 40 different
types of "nationwide permits" to allow construction of such potentially
harmful projects as single-family homes, surface mining, road crossings, and
hydropower projects.

Wetlands advocates are outraged that the Corps has moved so quickly to
revise the Nationwide Permit Program that would roll back some of the key
reforms incorporated into the program just last year. Those reforms resulted
from a prolonged and hard-fought battle to get rid of one of the most
important of these permits - Nationwide 26 - and reduce the damaging losses
of wetlands and streams allowed under rubber-stamped general permitting.
Nationwide 26 authorized discharges of materials into non-tidal headwaters
and isolated waters.

The reforms adopted in March 2000 replaced Nationwide 26 with a series of
new permits. These included:

*a lowering of the threshold for NWP activities to a half-acre or less of
wetlands loss;
*a limit on stream impacts under most of the permits to 300 linear feet or
less;
*prohibitions and limits on the use of the NWPs within the floodplain and in
critical waters and;
*improved reporting and mitigation requirements.

Under a proposal being drafted, the Corps would:

*drop the 300-linear foot limit, allowing literally thousands of feet of
streams to be buried within the half-acre impact limit in the permits.
Applicants would only need to notify the Corps about these activities.
*eliminate the overall half-acre limit on wetlands fills for subdivisions,
allowing destruction of up to one-half acre of wetlands and streams per lot.
*weaken the hard-won floodplain restrictions and back away from the
mitigation requirement for a one-to-one ratio of wetlands acreage
replacement.
*make it easier, not harder, for surface mining operations to get expedited
NWP approval to bury wetlands and streams in overburden.

Without coordinating with the EPA and the other federal resource agencies,
the Corps has drafted a proposal that would drastically weaken the program.
In fact, the EPA and the Fish and Wildlife Service have heavily criticized
the draft rules.

The Corps will soon release a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on
the NWP program, intended to demonstrate that it meets Clean Water Act
requirements for authorizing impacts that only result in minimal individual
and cumulative adverse impacts on the environment. The PEIS is not expected
to provide any hard data showing that the existing program meets those
conditions, let alone that weakening of the program is justified.

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