The status of wetlands has been in doubt from the beginning.
On the third day, Genesis says, the Almighty gathered the waters together and called them seas. The dry land he called earth.
But what about swamps, marshes, fens, bogs and all the other places on Earth that are neither wholly wet nor wholly dry?
Through the centuries, wetlands have had their ups and downs-mainly downs-as societies have tried to figure out what to do with these tracts where water and land mingle.
In the most recent oscillation, President Bush decided that the federal government, having gone too far in trying to protect America`s remaining wetlands, needed to be reined in with a tighter wetlands policy.
In the Chicago area, environmentalists say the stricter definition of a wetland in Bush`s new policy could lead to greater flooding through loss of flood plains, and a state official estimates that 66 percent of what the state currently classifies as wetland would fail to meet the new standard.
Ecologists value wetlands because they are rich wildlife habitats, store storm water that would otherwise flood homes and businesses, and purify polluted water. However, the vast majority of America`s wetlands have already been lost to agriculture and development. In 1818, when Illinois became a state, wetlands covered 23 percent of the state. Now, mainly because of agricultural cultivation, they cover 2.6 percent. Illinois ranks sixth among states in the percentage of wetlands it has lost.
But dire predictions of further losses are prematurely alarmist, according to proponents of the new policy, because that policy, set forth in some 100 pages of small type and technical language, was only published last week in the Federal Register. Figuring out how the policy applies in the field will take time, they say. Also, more changes could be forthcoming from Congress, where a wetlands bill supported by developers and farmers is pending, or from the General Assembly, where several widely varying wetlands proposals are pending.
Everyone agrees on this point: The changes so far announced mean that fewer acres will qualify as wetlands. Beyond that, agreement collapses. Farm groups and real-estate developers welcome the changes for lessening government restrictions on property rights; environmentalists lambaste Bush for what they see as the final reneging on his campaign pledge to be the ”environmental president.”
”To take this meat-ax approach to a scientific issue is to totally gut the wetlands protection provision of the Clean Water Act,” said Jerry Paulson, director of the McHenry County Defenders and national wetlands chairman of the Sierra Club. ”They`ve really thrown out the wetlands with the bath water.”
”An awful lot of so-called wetland doesn`t function as a wetland,” said Michael Luzier, environment expert for the National Homebuilders Association. ”This debate isn`t over the coastal marshes or the Everglades. What this change will hopefully do is eliminate a lot of the dry land that is being called wetlands. That`s good public policy.”
In the Chicago area, many of the remaining wetlands are along streams, mainly in eastern McHenry County and western Lake County, and around the Lake Calumet area on the Southeast Side.
Marvin Hubbell, manager of the Illinois Department of Conservation`s wetlands program, estimates that two-thirds of the state`s wetlands will fail to meet the new definition. Considering the types of wetlands that are involved, that figure is probably lower in the metropolitan area, he said.
Because of the nature of Bush`s new policy, wetlands along rivers are probably most at risk of being lost, Paulson said. The new standard for classifying an area as a wetland increases the number of days that the area must be covered with water or saturated below the surface.
Formerly, only seven days per year of such conditions qualified land as a wetland. Bush`s new standard says such land must be inundated for 15 days or saturated for 21 days. It also will push back the time when such measurements can be taken, to mid-April from early March, further restricting wetland status.
”Most of the areas that are going to fall out of the definition are along our rivers and streams because flood plains are unpredictable about how much water they`re going to have on them on any given year,” said Paulson.
”That will hurt efforts to control flooding in our area.”
But Luzier said the old standard was far too stringent.
”I would argue that that is way too dry to be called a wetland system,” he said. ”We`re not going to lose any viable wetlands as a result of this change.”
Claims that the old standards covered too much non-wetland acreage have been exaggerated, Paulson said. But he agreed with critics of the old wetlands policy that the standards, incorporated in a manual that Army Corps of Engineers officials use in the field to determine wetlands status, needed to be changed because they did not recognize regional differences.
”You can`t take a country that goes all the way from Alaska to the Everglades and come up with a single definition,” he said.
Even within Illinois, some soils will show wetlands characteristics sooner than others. Along the Kankakee River, Paulson notes, the soil tends to be sandy and does not hold water readily. Such soil would need longer periods of saturation than the tight, water-retentive soil of McHenry County before characteristic wetland plants, such as cattails, would grow in it.
Some wetlands that would otherwise not qualify under the new definition may still be preserved, though, if they are publicly owned, such as the estimated 9,300 acres of wetlands in the Cook County Forest Preserve system. And, regulations of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District limit building on flood plains in Cook County. Lake and Du Page Counties have ”pretty good” restrictions, too, Paulson said, but their effectiveness is limited because county regulations usually do not apply within municipal boundaries.
No one sees an immediate effect on the city`s proposal to build a new airport in the Lake Calumet area because many of the wetlands in the area will still qualify for federal review before they can be filled.
However, if a proposed change in the way wetlands are graded for their ecological quality goes through, the project could have easier sailing because the Lake Calumet wetlands vary in quality.
”I think the wetlands that are most in danger are the `perched` wetlands that are set on top of man-made features like fill,” said wetlands expert and airport opponent James Landing. ”My own personal feeling is that this might be an initial step in making it easier for the mayor`s airport proposal.”
But mayoral aide Robert Repel was poker-faced.
”We have never doubted our ability to get permission to build there,”
he said. ”Our policy is not going to change. We will still create new wetlands to mitigate the loss of wetlands on the site.”
