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Wetlands
The Sierra Club advocates a consistent public policy to preserve and restore the
hydrologic, biologic, and aesthetic values of wetlands as public assets. We place highest
priority on the protection of existing natural wetlands. Because our goal is to reverse,
not merely slow, the trend of wetlands destruction and degradation, we also support
restoration of degraded wetlands. Wetlands protection should be promoted further by
increased public understanding and enjoyment of wetland values through compatible uses.
In order to increase the quantity, diversity, quality and productivity of the nation's
wetlands:
- Public incentives to wetlands degradation should be removed, including tax benefits for
development or conversion, financial assistance (e.g., disaster insurance) for building or
rebuilding in flood-prone areas or on hydric soils, agricultural commodity supports for
surplus crops using inefficient and environmentally damaging means of production,
government-financed water resource development, irrigation, drainage, channelization,
infrastructure construction, and other direct and indirect subsidies.
- Public incentives for wetland protection should be extended, including tax benefits,
transfer of development rights to upland areas that are not adjacent to wetlands,
conservation easements, and other permanent protective designations for privately owned
wetlands.
- Public and private agencies and trusts should acquire wetlands for preservation,
management, research, and education. This effort should entail a program for identifying
prime endangered wetlands and their designation for acquisition and protection. Preference
should be given to their preservation as multipurpose ecosystems, rather than dedication
and manipulation for limited purposes (e.g., waterfowl or aquaculture production).
Publicly owned wetlands must be guaranteed full and permanent protection.
- We support establishment and strengthening of federal, state, and local programs for
planning, management, and regulation of human activities that affect wetlands. Agencies
whose charge is the protection of natural resources and the environment should be
designated as having the lead or an equal-partner role in these programs. These programs
must be adequately funded and staffed to provide ongoing inventory, research,
surveillance, enforcement, and education. Provision must be made for public participation
in all phases of these programs, as well as for full accountability by the public
agencies.
All proposals for development activities in wetlands should be considered to be
environmentally significant and therefore must be subject to an environmental assessment
or environmental impact statement, and public review. Public and private use of wetlands
must be subject to the same standards and conditions and must not involve obliteration or
significant alteration of wetlands that would degrade their natural functions. Filling,
excavating, grading, discing, draining, removing natural vegetation or blocking off its
light source, creating turbidity and siltation, channeling, altering inflows and exchange,
unregulated releasing of contaminants, and other direct or indirect disruptions should be
prohibited. Alternatives to mosquito and other pest control systems which fill,
contaminate, or otherwise significantly impede wetland functions, or interrupt the aquatic
food chain, should be encouraged. The use of wetlands for water pollution control must be
carefully regulated, monitored, and maintained with active public oversight to ensure that
limits are not exceeded and that the wetland's health is protected. Advanced
identification of wetlands should be fully utilized to avert damage in these areas (e.g.,
estuaries, bottomland hardwood forests, isolated wetlands essential for fish and
wildlife).
Unauthorized alteration, dumping of solid waste, and release of contaminants into wetlands
must be discouraged through rigorous enforcement, severe penalties, and complete
restoration requirements, as well as improved public education. "After-the-fact
permits" must be subject to penalties and restoration requirements as well as a
thorough environmental review with opportunity for public comment and mitigation
requirements.
- Nationally, a commitment to the rebuilding and restoration of wetlands should be
undertaken in order to improve their capacity to perform their ecological functions of
pollution, erosion, and flood control and support for fish and wildlife. Research,
education, and action programs should be initiated with funding from public revenues and
private monies. The responsibility for coordinating restoration sites and activities,
including the beneficial uses of dredge spoil, should be assigned to the appropriate
agencies charged with environmental and natural resource protection. Publicly financed
restoration activities should in the first instance benefit publicly owned wetlands, but
insofar as all wetlands constitute a public asset, public incentives and technical
assistance should be extended to private landowners to encourage wetlands restoration.
Provision must be made for citizen participation in the development, oversight, and
evaluation of publicly sponsored restoration activities, including site selection.
Restoration activities should emphasize re-establishment of indigenous vegetation,
elimination of the causes of degradation (e.g., inflow of contaminants, levees and
drainage structures, solid waste), and leaving the natural wetlands to heal and manage
themselves.
Adopted by the Board of Directors, May 2-3 1987
Guidelines
They were developed by the Club's Coastal Committee to help interpret and implement the
policy.
At this time, not all of the goals and objectives of the Sierra Club's agenda for
wetlands protection have statutory or regulatory force. In the event that a permitting
agency does not impose the strict limitations outlined in Item 4 above, the Sierra Club
believes that the following conditions should be sought by its members in order to prevent
an undesirable situation from becoming worse:
In order to fulfill the purpose of these prohibitions, development projects must be
designed and executed to avoid long-term disruption of wetland functions and values (e.g.,
directional drilling or the use of hovercraft must be given preference over the dredging
of access canals). Every permit for development involving temporary alteration of wetlands
must be accompanied by conditions, enforceable by contract and performance bonds, to
guarantee full restoration of functional values (e.g., removal of temporary structures or
fill, replacement of natural sediment and vegetation). Public and private projects must be
subject to the same standards and requirements even if this increases construction costs.
Development activities that involve significant alteration or destruction of wetlands
must have extensive public review to demonstrate that no practicable alternative exists
that would have less environmentally damaging impact, and should be restricted to use for
water-dependent public facilities. No development project in a wetland area should result
in a net loss of either wetland acreage or wetland values; therefore, all permits must be
contingent upon adequate mitigation plans, with full opportunity for the public to review
and comment on alternative mitigation plants. Compensatory mitigation is not an acceptable
alternative to eliminating or minimizing avoidable damage.
The objective of a mitigation plan should be the long-term and incremental gain in a
comprehensive range of wetland values, through at least a 2:1 replacement of acreage of
the disturbed wetland. The following conditions should be met:
- The cost of the entire mitigation process must be borne by the applicant, and long-term
responsibilities and evaluation criteria for the success of the mitigation project should
be specified in the permit conditions. These conditions must be enforced by contract and
performance bonds to ensure the implementation and completion of the mitigation project.
- No mitigation plan should be considered unless the authorizing agency has committed the
requisite staff, expertise, and resources for long-term monitoring and enforcement. These
responsibilities may be delegated to a third party under contract and accountable to the
authorizing agency, but funded entirely by the applicant. Similarly, the agency should
contract for planning and implementation with funding provided by the applicant.
- Mitigation should address all temporary and long-term negative impacts of the
development project -- direct, indirect, cumulative, and synergistic.
- Mitigation activities generally should be confined to restoration of degraded wetlands
or previously functioning wetlands, provided that sites are available within the
authorizing agency's jurisdiction and that they meet the needs of a comprehensive
restoration plan. Preference should be given to restoration of the same wetland type
within the same hydrologic system (drainage basin or waterway) as that to be altered, and
should take into consideration the most critical and endangered wetland types in the local
regional setting.
Under no circumstances should an applicant be allowed to destroy part of
a wetland area in return for "improving" another part of the same area, or to
gain mitigation "credits" for restoring a wetland he/she has degraded. Creation
of wetlands in upland areas is generally undesirable, particularly at the current level of
scientific and technical understanding. Wetland mitigation should not result in the loss
of their biologically valuable habitats; the destruction of adjacent habitats and
communities should be avoided.
- Based on detailed hydrological and biological assessment of the wetland and its
surrounding watershed, an adequate buffer should be provided to assure the future
protection of the restored or created wetland. At least 300-500 feet should usually be
recommended. Access to and uses of the restored wetland should be restricted as a
"temporal buffer" until regeneration is assured. If the wetland is located
adjacent to water, a buffer area should extend at least as far in the adjacent shallow
water.
- Preferably, the mitigation should have been completed and shown to be at least 75%
successful before work may begin in the development project. At a minimum, the mitigation
project must have been implemented to a point where reasonable assurance of success has
been established before the development project may be commenced. Two growing seasons
should be the minimum time to determine the success of the mitigation project.
- The restored or created wetland must be protected by legal mechanisms, such as a special
zoning designation, deed restrictions, or covenants, to ensure their continued existence
and projection. Created wetlands should be subject to all of the legal projections of
jurisdictional wetlands.
- Mitigation must result in a net gain in wetland acreage and in the full panoply of
wetland functions (e.g., trading of flood control at one site for habitat improvements at
another cannot be counted as a net gain in wetland functions).
- Complete, consistent, and accurate documentation of the development and the mitigation
projects must be collected and retained by the authorizing agency as part of the permanent
public record. This is particularly important because of the experimental nature of
wetland restoration and creation. This record should include details of the site
evaluation before and after the development disturbance (inspection reports, maps,
photographs, and analyses), all biological, hydrological, and engineering designs and
plans, site monitoring data, and evaluations of the development and mitigation projects by
other federal, state, and local agencies. In addition, names, addresses, telephone
numbers, and affiliations of all personal who have a working knowledge of the projects
should be retained.
- Donation or preservation of another wetland is not acceptable alone as mitigation for
the loss of the project wetland, as this still constitutes a net loss in wetland acreage
and values. The overall mitigation plan must provide for restoration and/or creation of
wetlands.
- Mitigation banks should be integrated into a comprehensive program for wetlands
restoration under the authority of a "resource" agency. Provision must be made
for public participation in all phases of the mitigation bank, including planning,
operation, and education; conditions 1-11 should be applied.
Glossary
Wetlands: Lands that are transitional between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
wherein the water table is usually at or near the surface and the land is covered
periodically by shallow water; those lands must have one or more of the following
attributes:
- At least periodically, it supports predominantly hydrophytes;
- Its substrate is predominantly undrained by hydric soil; and/or
- Its substrate is nonsoil and is saturated with water or covered by shallow water at some
time during the growing season of each year.
Wetland values/wetland functions: Generally understood to encompass:
- Environmental quality values (water quality maintenance, aquatic productivity,
microclimate regulation, etc.);
- Fish and wildlife values (fish and shellfish, waterfowl and other birds, and furbearers
and other wildlife); and
- Socioeconomic values (flood control, erosion control, water supply, fishing and hunting,
aesthetics, research, and education, etc.). Wetlands vary in the values they bestow,
depending on local variations in hydrology, soils, vegetation, and topography.
Development: Human activity that impacts or disturbs wetlands.
Mitigation: Compensation for unavoidable alteration that counterbalances the damage or
destruction of the natural wetland ecosystem (including habitat and hydrology).
Restoration: Rehabilitation of a natural wetland ecosystem after disturbance by human
activity.
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