and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. There is a suggestion that the Federal Water 

 Resources Development Act of 1986 be extended so that only those activities 

 involving clear national goals receive Federal financing, and that non-Federal 

 benefits are paid for by non-Federal sponsors. Benefits o1^ water projects should 

 be estimated in prices that are free of the impacts of Federal and State farm 

 programs. The provisions of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 should be extended to 

 include gains from the sale of all converted wetlands. Federal aid for highway 

 construction should carry penalties for the use of highway ditches for wetland 

 drain outlets. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be a consultant on 

 all Federally aided highway projects. The Service would alert the State agencies 

 to environmentally sensitive resources affected by highway projects. 



The mitigation requirements of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 

 should be extended to all Federal projects affecting wetlands. The acquisition 

 of wetlands through various Federal programs should be accelerated. Specific 

 steps to facilitate this process include cost-sharing between State, Federal, 

 local, and private agencies in wetlands restoration projects. Advantageous use 

 of temporarily depressed farm land prices and earnings could augment wetlands 

 acquisitions and easement purchases. 



87. Heimlich, R.E. 1988. The swampbuster provision: implementation and 

 impact. 1988. Pages 87-94 in P.J. Stuber, coordinator. Proceedings of 

 the national symposium on protection of wetlands from agricultural impacts. 

 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biological Report 88(16). Washington, DC. 



Heimlich points out that the traditional methodology for testing the 

 effectiveness of the swampbuster legislation of the Food Security Act of 1985 

 is to build a causal model of wetland on-farm drainage that functionally relates 

 the level of drainage to a group of quantifiable independent variables. The 

 swampbuster sanctions of the Food Security Act of 1985 would operate by changing 

 the magnitudes of some subset of the independent variables in a simple 

 deterministic fashion. The great advantage of such a model is the clarity and 

 simplicity it affords in describing the chain of causality linking policy shifts 

 to changes in drainage activity. A paucity of data renders it virtually 

 impossible to test a causal model of drainage activity by farmers. However, an 

 abundance of data exists on wetlands and their distribution. Also, there are 

 lots of data on farm income and other socio-economic variables that might 

 determine the level of on-farm drainage of wetlands. Finally, there are some 

 variables that indicate the potential leverage of Federal farm programs to impede 

 wetlands drainage. Heimlich used a statistical technique called (principal 

 components) factor analysis to examine cross-section (by county) data to see if 

 various data from the three groups listed above could be effectively related to 

 each other. The casual mechanism that would be "tested" by the use of ordinary 

 least squares regression technique is "revealed" or delineated by the principal 

 components factor analysis approach. 



Heimlich's factor analysis model indicates that five factors can be cited 

 as having a significant effect on the success of swampbuster. He lists these 

 five factors as wetlands, importance of agriculture, cropland conversion 

 potential, cropland change, and government farm payments. These five factors 

 can be combined in various ways to indicate the likelihood of the success of the 

 swampbuster program in deterring wetlands drainage for any county in the U.S. 



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