148 • Wetlands: Their Use and Regulation 



opportunity costs — and related effects on national 

 interests, such as energy supply. How these costs 

 are evaluated depends not only on their absolute 

 magnitude but also on how the observer evaluates 

 the 404 program itself. A strong supporter of the 

 objectives of the 404 program could find even large 

 costs in all categories acceptable if it could be shown 

 that these goals were met as a result. Conversely, 

 even relatively small costs in a single category could 

 be regarded as unacceptable if the 404 program 

 were judged unnecessary or of low priority. In ad- 

 dition, the evaluation of costs is affected by how 

 the administration of the 404 program is viewed — 

 whether the program is seen as efficiendy and equit- 

 ably implemented or needlessly cosdy and time con- 

 suming to applicants. Before discussing specific 

 quantifiable costs, some of the more important ob- 

 jections to the rationale and administration of the 

 program are summarized. 



The Need for the 404 Program to 

 Protect Wetlands 



Although most industries agree that at least some 

 wetlands provide important benefits to society,* a 

 number of sources contend that the 404 program 

 is not essential for protecting wetland resources. 

 One argument is that conversion rates were only 

 0.5 percent per year between the 1950's and 1970's 

 and are probably less now. Since wetlands are not 

 under great threat from the activities regulated by 

 the program, the scope of the 404 program may 

 be reduced without great harm to wetlands. One 

 source, using the U.S. Department of Agriculture 

 (USDA) Soil Conservation Service (SCS) informa- 

 tion, stated that annual creation of new wetlands 

 exceeds wetland destruction.'" Another source, in- 

 terpreting IWR figures, contended that annual wet- 

 land conversion is small relative to the total wedand 

 acreage in the United States — about 300,000 acres 

 per year out of more than 148 million acres regu- 

 lated by the program, or 0.2 percent. If the 404 

 program prevents a similar amount of wedand acre- 

 age from being converted annually, as claimed by 

 IWR, abolition of the 404 program would result 



only in approximately doubling this conversion 

 rate, which in the eyes of this source would repre- 

 sent an insignificant amount of wedand converted." 



Similar arguments are made with respect to the 

 impacts of development activities in specific areas. 

 For example, according to one estimate, oil com- 

 pany operations on the North Slope of Alaska have 

 resulted in the "disturbance" of approximately 

 7,300 acres of tundra.'^ Depending on the frame 

 of reference used — whether this acreage is com- 

 pared with the total tundra acreage of all of Alaska, 

 the North Slope region alone, or just the area within 

 the oilfield where the disturbance is concentrated — 

 this area represents from considerably less than 1 

 percent to 4.5 percent of tundra. It is argued that 

 the impacts of oil extraction should be considered 

 in relation to the far greater number of acres left 

 undisturbed. 



Last, many sources favoring relaxation of the 404 

 program contend that States are capable of provid- 

 ing adequate wetland protection and, indeed, are 

 better suited to do so, both in terms of knowledge 

 about their own resources and in terms of what ob- 

 servers see as the desirable amount of power States 

 should possess vis-a-vis the Federal Government. 



Some of the above arguments can be viewed from 

 a different perspective. Between the mid- 1 950 's and 

 the mid-1970's, about 500,000 acres of wedands 

 were converted to other uses each year. Also, con- 

 version rates differ for different types of wetlands 

 and for different areas of the country. Some wet- 

 lands are under much greater pressure than the na- 

 tional figure indicates. For example, conversion 

 rates for the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Plain be- 

 tween the mid-1950's and the mid-1970's were 

 three times higher than the national average. Con- 

 version rates for freshwater emergent wetlands in 

 this period were four times greater than those for 

 freshwater scrub/shrub. 



'This was stated by several industry representatives in talks with 

 OTA staff, and no association has explicitly challenged this notion 

 in its public statements on the 404 program. 



'"Julian Simon, "Are We Losing Our Farmland?," Public Interest, 

 No. 67, spring 1982, p. 53. 



"Pacific Legal Foundation, "A Report to the Presidential Task 

 Force on Regulatory Relief in Support of the ArmyOMB Regulatory 

 Proposals for Clean Water Act Section 404," Mar. 18, 1983, pp. 11-12. 

 This reasoning is rather unfair, as IWR was only considering losses 

 in the approximately 90 million vegetated wetland acres of the con- 

 tinental United States. 



"Alaska Corps District, as reported in ESA/Madrone, "Wetlands 

 and Regulation: Alaska Case Study," contract study for OTA, January 

 1983, pp. 2-11. 



