“Isolated”
Wetlands
The Clean Water Act was initially
enacted in 1972 as an effort to control water pollution. For the purpose of
this article the CWA refers to waters that are navigable. These waters include
territorial seas and ‘wetlands’ (Leibowitz &
Nadeau, 2003) .
Section 404 of the CWA establishes a program to “protect the nation’s waters by
requiring a permit for the discharge of dredged or fill material into waters of
the United States, including wetlands” (Leibowitz &
Nadeau, 2003) .
The focus of the court case mentioned, Solid
Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U.S.
159 (2001) (SWANCC), was to determine if The Migratory Bird Rule addressed
whether to include isolated waters as waters of the U.S. “The Court held that
the CWA is not intended to protect isolated, intrastate, non-navigable waters
based solely on their use by migratory birds, but did not decide whether
Congress had the authority to regulate such waters” (Leibowitz &
Nadeau, 2003) .
A large problem with determining if
isolated wetlands is included in wetlands discussions is the very definition of
‘isolated wetlands’. Since there is no consistent definition, nor is there a
reliable data set stating the quantity of isolated wetlands, the Court cannot
easily dictate measures, policies, and/or laws regarding them. For this article
certain assumptions were made in an attempt to identify these wetland
environments by defining isolated wetlands as being within 500 meters adjacent
to a river or stream. This definition has several issues, first most isolated
wetlands are nowhere near streams or navigable rivers. Second, many fall within
farmland boundaries and therefore the Swampbuster Act, creating jurisdictional
cross-over issues. Third, the analysis only focuses on “at-risk” wetlands,
which may or may not be the case depending on where, when, and what type of
environment is in question.
The article concludes by
recommending “that geographically isolated wetlands be defined for the purposes
of scientific inquiry as ‘wetlands that are completely surrounded by upland
[enviornments]’” (Leibowitz &
Nadeau, 2003) .
This definition focuses on three items: vegetation, soils, and hydrology as
ways of defining where an isolated wetland’s boundaries’ are. Though the paper
goes into details on wetlands functionality in the environment, they do not
give a concrete definition, nor do they specify a significant difference
between isolated wetlands and other wetlands and in some instances, non-wetland
environments.
Following up on the 2003 article
are two articles relating to the definition of isolated wetlands and a current
piece of legislature regarding them. In 2015, Indiana University researchers wrote
in an article in BioScience (the
journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences) that
"geographically isolated wetlands provide important benefits such as
sediment and carbon retention, nutrient transformation and water-quality
improvement, all of which are critical for maintaining water quality” (Isolated
wetlands have significant impact on water quality, 2015) . The article goes on
to explain that these particular types of wetlands are created within naturally
forming depressions within the landscape and can include ‘prairie potholes,’
‘playas,’ ‘vernal pools,’ and even the Carolina Bays. These wetlands are
important because they often retain water longer than the typically protected
wetland environments around streams and navigable waterways previously
mentioned. The study estimates that “the U.S. has lost approximately half of
[the isolated wetlands] that were present before European settlement” (Isolated
wetlands have significant impact on water quality, 2015) and that this loss
has resulted in an increase of “5 million to 150 million tons per year of
sediment entering surface waters [and a] decrease [in] the carbon sequestered
by the wetlands by about 1 million to 14 million tons per year” (Isolated
wetlands have significant impact on water quality, 2015) .
Various
states that house these isolated wetlands are now taking an initiative to
preserve and protect them. In North Dakota, one of the states that makes up the
Prairie Pothole region, the state is actually paying it’s farmers to protect
and not alter these small, seasonal wetlands on the farmer’s property (Schlecht, 2016) . The North Dakota
Working Wetlands Project, as it’s called, focuses on the “small depressions in
grasslands that fill with water. In dry years, the wetlands can appear no
different than the land surrounding them, but in wet years they can become
little lakes” (Schlecht, 2016) .
In the
past, many programs were created to discourage farmers from using, draining, or
destroying these isolated wetlands, but the North Dakota Working Wetlands
Project realized there was “a better way to keep farmers from altering wetlands
on valuable farmland, which houses many of the nation’s ducks” (Schlecht, 2016) . The answer was
easy: pay the farmers for the difference in their seasonal crops. In North
Dakota, protecting the almost 9,400 wetlands on 4,815.4 acres will come to
almost $1.75 million dollars paid out to farmers by 2019 (Schlecht, 2016) .
North
Dakota isn’t the only state or country working towards the goal of protecting
these small, unincorporated wetland environments. “In Canada, a similar
program, called ALUS, pays farmers for positive ecological services, including
not draining wetlands” (Schlecht, 2016) . These small wetlands conserve 0.7
acre-feet of water per acre of wetland, hold 89 pounds of nitrogen and 1.7
pounds of phosphorous per acre as well as create wildlife habitat (Schlecht, 2016) . The program is
doing so well that it is to be proposed on the next Farm Bill before Congress.
The new additions to the Bill would include larger temporary wetlands and
involve farmers all over the Prairie Pothole region and even though the program
would likely exceed $240 million per year program directors propose that
“preserving the wetlands and all the benefits that come with them in a way that
benefits farmers would be worth the expense” (Schlecht, 2016) .
References
Isolated wetlands have significant impact on water
quality. (2015, February 25).
Retrieved from Phys.oeg:
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-isolated-wetlands-significant-impact-quality.html
Leibowitz, S. G., & Nadeau, T.-L. (2003,
September). Isolated Wetlands: State-of-the-Science and Future Directions. Wetlands,
23(3), 663-684.
Schlecht, J. (2016, August 21). Pilot project
takes on ag-friendly wetland preservation. Retrieved October 3, 2016, from
Bismarck Tribune:
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/pilot-project-takes-on-ag-friendly-wetland-preservation/article_447440af-86b7-5fa7-a8a7-f2dd0e665d72.html
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