[StBernard] Army Corps proposes easing Gulf wetlands rule

[Westley Annis]

Army Corps proposes easing Gulf wetlands rule 
Anger greets plan to let developers skip permits to speed Katrina recovery
By Mike Stuckey
Senior news editor
MSNBC


Updated: 1:31 p.m. CT Oct 19, 2006
Federal wetlands regulators have dropped a bombshell on environmentalists
with a little-publicized proposal to relax restrictions on filling in
certain wetlands along the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast to speed recovery
from Hurricane Katrina.

"It's unethical, illegal, immoral, unsustainable and they're simply doing it
to make the fat cats richer faster," said Derrick Evans, executive director
of a Gulfport, Miss., community group that plans to fight the proposal by
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps' proposal would allow property owners and developers to skirt the
conventional "regional general permit" process for any projects that fill up
to 5 acres of "low-quality" wetlands in the six southernmost Mississippi
counties. Especially galling to environmentalists: The new process would
also eliminate the requirement for public notice of such projects.

Vital to ecosystems for their role in filtering runoff, controlling floods
and decreasing erosion, wetlands are a hot topic all along the
hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. Not only was the flooding from Hurricane
Katrina exacerbated by the extensive loss of marshes and bogs to centuries
of development in the region, the storm claimed thousands of acres of
remaining wetlands.

Last year's deadly hurricane also destroyed 70,000 homes and tens of
thousands of other buildings in Mississippi. A desire to streamline the
rebuilding process in the wake of Katrina is behind the proposed change in
wetlands rules, said Jason Steele of the Corps' Mobile, Ala., office. 


"At this point, the housing demands are pretty great, so this is just a way
to help out with that situation," said Steele, noting that the proposal "in
all likelihood will change dramatically" after the current 30-day period for
public comment closes. 

Steele said the post-Katrina workload on his short-staffed office has been
intense, with just four project managers available to oversee work in the
six Mississippi counties: Hancock, Harrison and Jackson, which abut the Gulf
of Mexico; and Pearl River, Stone and George to the north. The Corps is also
grappling with a June decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that muddied the
federal agency's authority in regulating virtually all of the nation's
wetlands, a sweeping power it had claimed under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

The current permit process to fill wetlands is supposed to take 120 days or
less, Steele said, but is dragging out to as long as eight months. "We
understand that in the very near future, developers will be coming in
greater numbers," he said.

The change in procedure would allow property owners to decide on their own
that any wetlands in planned developments are 5 acres or less and of "low
quality," and proceed quickly to the building phase. The proposal covers
virtually all land uses from houses to shopping centers. Tidal wetlands,
historic sites and any known habitat of endangered or threatened species are
excluded. 


Lawmaker 'absolutely shocked'
"I was absolutely shocked," said state Rep. Frances Fredericks of Gulfport,
who said she learned about the proposal after an Oct. 12 meeting between
environmentalists and Corps officials. 

"We've just had the worst disaster this country has ever had," she said.
"People are taking advantage of that to come in and get permits, pushing and
pushing to get permits all in the name of recovery to do things they wanted
to do for a long time." 

The meeting was sought by Evans' group, Turkey Creek Community Initiatives,
the Sierra Club, elected officials and others to complain about what they
saw as lax or non-existent enforcement of wetlands regulations in the crush
of post-Katrina rebuilding. 

"Basically, at this meeting, they tell us they have no ability to do
enforcement," said Howard Page, the Sierra Club's regional conservation
chairman and a member of the club's state board. Instead, he said, they were
told of the proposal to lessen wetlands regulation.

"Everyone kind of all at once dropped their jaw and looked at it," Page
said. "The proposed change would codify the lack of enforcement."


Gulfport attorney Robert Wiygul, who has represented numerous environmental
groups and was at the meeting, said he also was shocked: "This thing is
crazy."

Area builders don't think so. Although he had not yet seen the Corps
proposal, Don Halle, the newly elected vice president of the Home Builders
Association of the Gulf Coast, said, "If they would do that, it would
certainly help out in a large way. Virtually everything where we're located
could be deemed wetlands the way they do it."

Several questions
But Evans, Page, Wiygul and a number of other environmentalists and wetlands
experts contacted by MSNBC.com questioned the Corps proposal on several
grounds. 

"Five acres is quite a lot," said Dr. Denise Reed, a University of New
Orleans geologist who specializes in wetlands. "Five acres doesn't sound
like a lot but we know from other areas of the coast that multiple small
impacts like this cumulatively can be very damaging."

The jump in size from a half-acre to five also caught the attention of Chris
Lagarde, a biologist who handles environmental issues for Congressman Gene
Taylor, a Democrat whose district includes his hometown of Bay St. Louis.
"When they permit 5 acres at a time they always say there's no going to be
any impact, but when you put 10 of them together, you've impacted 50 acres,"
he said.

Evans said his group's chief concern when it comes to filling in wetlands is
the potential for flooding. "People died unnecessarily in my watershed
because of the Corps' previous willingness to develop housing in places
where housing does not belong," he said. "Floodwaters that instead would
have been dispersed ended up in my mother's living room, 4 miles from the
beach."


Proposal is fluid, Corps official says
The Corps' Steele said the acreage issue is one that could well be changed
as a result of public comment during the 30-day period. "If people suggest
maybe an acre might be more environmentally friendly and that's a consistent
comment that we receive then we'll take that into consideration and we'll
probably revise it down to an acre," he said.

The environmentalists' concern that the new permit rules would eliminate a
public notification and comment process when such wetlands are to be filled
is well-founded, Steele said. "There would not be any notice for these
general permits," he said. "There's no notification process."

"The loss of public participation was the red flag for everybody," Page
said. "That's the only way we can do anything." 

Without knowing what wetlands are being filled, the environmentalists say,
they can't monitor and challenge the permits and make sure that only true
"low-quality" areas will be affected. "Did you ever meet a developer that
thought something was high-quality wetlands?" Wiygul asked rhetorically.

Steele said the new process would still call on the Corps to "verify" a
developer's own assessment of wetlands quality, known as a "delineation,"
usually performed by environmental consultants that the Corps has had a hand
in training. "If we don't consider it a low-quality wetland, it would go
through the standard individual process," he said.

One such consultant, Patrick Chubb of Biloxi, Miss., who performs about a
hundred delineations and related studies a year, doubted that the Corps
would give very close scrutiny to many of the applications processed under
the new rules. Currently, at the half-acre limit, "they always have the
opportunity (to review the delineation) if they choose to. Most of the time,
I would say they don't."

Chubb was among a number of sources who had not heard about the proposal
until contacted by MSNBC.com. Federal and state officials outside the Corps
were notified of the plan by letter, according to the proposal itself. But
Steele said other parties would only have been informed only if they had
signed up in advance for e-mail alerts or happened to click on link to
"Public Notices" on the Corps' Mobile district Web site.

Chubb said he was surprised he had not heard of the plan because he deals
frequently with Corps officials and prides himself on staying abreast of all
such issues. Reed also was surprised to first learn of the proposal from
MSNBC.com, especially since she sits on an environmental advisory board to
the Corps. Her fellow board member, Kenneth Babcock of Ducks Unlimited, also
had not seen the Corps proposal until it was e-mailed to him, but he said
the panel has a national focus and the Mississippi proposal appeared to be
"more regional in nature" and appeared to adequately balance environmental
concerns with economic ones.

News to congressman's staff
Nor had Lagarde of Rep. Taylor's staff seen the proposal until contacted by
MSNBC.com. He said he planned to look into it immediately. "I'm not sure
where this originated but I suspect it has something to do with all the
condos that want to come to town, all the golf courses that want to come to
town," he said.

Lauren Thompson of the state's Department of Marine Resources said her
agency was in the middle of reviewing the proposal and would comment on it
during the review period. 

But the Corps plan "is such a significant proposal and it's so unprecedented
that they need to give the public additional time," said Jeff Grimes of the
Gulf Restoration Network, who said his group would ask the Corps to extend
the comment period another 30 days. 

In the meantime, the Sierra Club, Evans' group and others are rallying their
troops to bombard the Corps with feedback against the proposal. 

The notion that wetlands, even low quality wetlands, need to be filled to
provide new housing is "a false choice, it's not real," Evans said. "It's
because it's cheaper. It's cheaper for the developers to get a couple
hundred acres of wooded wetlands, fill it in, throw up some housing, throw
up some new Wal-Mart, whatever, it's just more expedient to them ... than
doing the more sustainable recovery approach, which is to do redevelopment
in the downtown areas." 


C 2006 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15305378/