come through legal and unregulated 

 operations. 



Ongoing forestry and farming 

 operations are exempt from wetlands 

 legislation. New agricultural activities 

 that convert an existing wetland to a 

 dry, usable land only require a permit 

 from the corps. Chances are, the 

 permit will be approved. Only about 

 500 of 15,000 permit applications 

 reviewed by the corps each year are 

 denied. 



Piers, marinas, highways and other 

 projects routinely are built in wetlands. 

 And draining, clearing and channel- 

 izing wetlands are not specifically 

 prohibited by law. 



Statewide dissatisfaction with 

 current wetland management practices 

 led to the formation of a legislative 

 Wetlands Protection Study Commis- 

 sion in 1990. After a year, no consen- 

 sus developed, Rader says. 



"It is possible 



to make policies 



that protect coastal 



and freshwater 



wetlands but don't 



hurt the economy," 



says Clark. 



Three or four drafts of state 

 wetlands policies have crossed the 

 desks of officials at the N.C. Depart- 

 ment of Environment, Health and 

 Natural Resources since 1990, Rader 

 adds. But none have been adopted. 

 The state now uses a system to rank 

 freshwater and saltwater wetlands, 

 but the system has not been officially 

 approved. 



In early 1991, a coalition of major 

 environmental groups encouraged 



Tundra swans on Pungo Lake 



the N.C. General Assembly to protect 

 the state's remaining marshes, 

 swamps and other types of wetlands. 

 The N.C. Sierra Club, the N.C. 

 Environmental Defense Fund, the 

 N.C. Coastal Federation and eight 

 other groups formed the N.C. Wet- 

 lands Coalition. 



The group saw fruition with the 

 introduction of a bill by Rep. Bruce 

 Etheridge of Carteret County in the 

 1991 General Assembly. The bill calls 

 for a "no net loss" policy for wetlands 

 and requires the state Environmental 

 Management Commission to define 

 which areas should be protected. 



The policy, made popular by 

 President George Bush during his 

 election campaign, basically means 

 that any wetlands destroyed or 

 impaired by development will be 

 replaced by creating wetlands else- 

 where. 



Nationally, frustration over unclear 

 wetlands definitions and over the loss 

 of wetlands brought concerned 

 citizens and federal agencies together 

 for the 1988 National Wetlands Policy 

 Forum. Out of that grew the now 

 controversial 1989 Federal Manual for 

 Identifying and Delineating Wetlands. 



This manual created an uproar 

 among developers, homebuilders and 

 farmers who claimed that it failed to 

 discriminate adequately among 

 different types of wetlands and led to 

 inconsistencies in federal authority. 



In response, the Bush administra- 

 tion published a revised manual on 



Aug. 14, 1991. As of February, the 

 period for citizen comment on the 

 manual had been extended three 

 times. 



The 1991 manual proposes a 

 tighter system to rank wetlands, 

 classifying them as high, medium and 

 low value; a revision of the methods 

 for identifying wetlands; a require- 

 ment that the government buy all 

 wetlands classified as "high-value"; 

 and elimination of the EPA's role in 

 regulation. 



Under the proposal, field tests by 

 the N.C. Division of Environmental 

 Management found that 51 percent of 

 all wetlands previously regulated, or 

 about 2 million acres, would no longer 

 be covered if the delineation were 

 based on the 1991 manual's require- 

 ments. About half of the loss would be 

 in wet pine flatwoods and the other 

 half in bottomland hardwood forests. 



David R. Kitts, assistant manager 

 of the Pocosin Lakes National 

 Wildlife Refuge, estimates that about 

 20,000 acres of the eastern North 

 Carolina refuge's 111,000 acres could 

 be lost under the proposed standards. 

 Long-term, specific water control 

 structures could remedy the situation, 

 he says. 



Westward, in Durham's New Hope 

 Creek, 95 percent of the existing 

 wetlands would be gone, Harrison 

 estimates. 



In both regions, and in wetlands 

 across the state, an area was previ- 

 ously considered wet if water satu- 



8 MARCH/APRIL 1992 



