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EPA's New Rules Allow Wetlands Trade-Offs

Developers can destroy if they create others elsewhere; environmentalists dismayed

By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff

Posted Mar 31, 2008 3:46 PM CDT

(Newser) – The Environmental Protection Agency today issued new wetlands-protection rules with a focus on “mitigation banking”— creating marshes elsewhere in compensation for those destroyed by development, the AP reports. The EPA argues that mitigation banking ensures the most overall wetlands protection because wetlands are often irrevocably damaged by construction, rendering on-site measures to offset the loss useless.

Environmentalists worry that the regulations will ultimately prove harmful, as “the cheaper it is to mitigate, the more economic it is to buy land that has wetlands on it and destroy them," said National Wildlife Federation expert. Wetlands are often crucial to local ecosystems, critics say, and creating new ones miles away is often of little benefit.

The Empire State Building is visible as a background to Jamaica Bay in New York, Thursday, June 21, 2007, with clumps of marsh grasses in the foreground.
The Empire State Building is visible as a background to Jamaica Bay in New York, Thursday, June 21, 2007, with clumps of marsh grasses in the foreground.   (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
A rusting barbed wire fence marks the line between the Pacific Shores subdivision, foreground, and public land and the Pacific Ocean at Pelican Bay at the Lake Earl Wildlife Area near Crescent City, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007.
A rusting barbed wire fence marks the line between the Pacific Shores subdivision, foreground, and public land and the Pacific Ocean at Pelican Bay at the Lake Earl Wildlife Area near Crescent City, Calif.,...   (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
A pair of American Oystercatchers take flight over the salt marsh grasses of Jamaica Bay in New York, Thursday, June 21, 2007.
A pair of American Oystercatchers take flight over the salt marsh grasses of Jamaica Bay in New York, Thursday, June 21, 2007.   (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
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