171 



agencies and the regulated community have acquired during its 

 implementation. If H.R. 1330 is enacted. §404 would be rebuilt from 

 scratch to develop a completely new regulatory program, creating 

 years of confusion for wetlands regulators and the regulated 

 community alike. 



The flaws in H.R. 1330 are almost too numerous to list. and. thus, we 

 uill only focus on some of the most major deficiencies of H.R. 1330 in 

 this testimony. 



H.R. 1330 eviscerates the Section 404 program b\ eliminating the 

 Section 404(b)(1) Guidelines -- the heart of the Section 404 program 

 -- and terminating EPA's role in the Section 404 program. Despite 

 the flexibility in the § 404(b)(1) Guidelines, the bill would replace the 

 §404 permit program with a policy of "wetland triage" that ranks 

 wetlands into high, medium and low value categories with the latter 

 two categories receiving little or no protection. This completely fails 

 to recognize the natural diversity of function which wetlands 

 provide, by essentially setting up an arbitrary system of comparing 

 apples and oranges and determining that one is more important than 

 the other. 



H.R. 1330 would strip away protection under the §404 program for 

 half of the nation's wetland acres. By replacing the scientific 

 definition of wetlands (which all four agencies use) with an arbitrary 

 and politically motivated standard, the bill would define wetlands so 

 narrowly that large tracts of even the Everglades and the Great 

 Dismal Swamp would no longer be considered wetlands. 



Furthermore, the bill imposes astronomically new financial liabilities 

 that would bankrupt the federal treasury by requiring federal 

 acquisition, at the discretion of the landowner, of so-called "high 

 \alue" wetlands. .A conservative estimate by the Congressional 

 Budget Office suggest a S10-S45 billion cost for the land acquisition 

 components alone of H.R. 1330. This payment provision is 

 completely unnecessary in light of the protection already provided 

 by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. 



In short. H.R. 1330 converts the existing §404 regulatory program to 



little more than a costly "rubber stamping" program for issuing 



v\etlands destruction permits. This bill is a disaster for wetlands, 

 and a disaster for all of us. 



