Army Corps and EPA Improve Wetland and Stream Mitigation

WASHINGTON, March 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today released a new rule
to clarify how to provide compensatory mitigation for unavoidable impacts to
the nation's wetlands and streams. The rule will enable the agencies to
promote greater consistency, predictability and ecological success of
mitigation projects under the Clean Water Act.

"This rule greatly improves implementation, monitoring, and performance, and
will help us ensure that unavoidable losses of aquatic resources and functions
are replaced for the benefit of this Nation. This is a key step in our
efforts to make the Army's Regulatory Program a winner, and the best it can be
for the regulated community we serve and those interested in both economic
development and environmental protection," said John Paul Woodley, Jr.,
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works.

"This rule advances the President's goals of halting overall loss of wetlands
and improving watershed health through sound science, market-based approaches,
and cooperative conservation," said EPA Assistant Administrator for Water,
Benjamin H. Grumbles. "The new standards will accelerate our wetlands
conservation efforts under the Clean Water Act by establishing more effective,
more consistent, and more innovative mitigation practices."

Benefits of the compensatory mitigation rule include:

-- Fostering greater predictability, increased transparency and improved
performance of compensatory mitigation projects

-- Establishing equivalent standards for all forms of mitigation

-- Responding to recommendations of the National Research Council to improve
the success of wetland restoration and replacement projects

-- Setting clear science-based and results-oriented standards nationwide while
allowing for regional variations

-- Increasing and expanding public participation

-- Encouraging watershed-based decisions

-- Emphasizing the "mitigation sequence" requiring that proposed projects
avoid and minimize potential impacts to wetlands and streams before proceeding
to compensatory mitigation

Each year thousands of property owners undertake projects that affect the
nation's aquatic resources. Proposed projects that are determined to impact
jurisdictional waters are first subject to review under the Clean Water Act.
The Corps of Engineers reviews these projects to ensure environmental impacts
to aquatic resources are avoided or minimized as much as possible. Consistent
with the administration's goal of "no net loss of wetlands" a Corps permit may
require a property owner to restore, establish, enhance or preserve other
aquatic resources in order to replace those impacted by the proposed project.
This compensatory mitigation process seeks to replace the loss of existing
aquatic resource functions and area.

Property owners required to complete mitigation are encouraged to use a
watershed approach and watershed planning information. The new rule
establishes performance standards, sets timeframes for decision making, and to
the extent possible, establishes equivalent requirements and standards for the
three sources of compensatory mitigation: permittee-responsible mitigation,
mitigation banks and in-lieu-fee programs.

The new rule changes where and how mitigation is to be completed, but
maintains existing requirements on when mitigation is required. The rule also
preserves the requirement for applicants to avoid or minimize impacts to
aquatic resources before proposing compensatory mitigation projects to offset
permitted impacts.

Wetlands and streams provide important environmental functions including
protecting and improving water quality and providing habitat to fish and
wildlife. Successful compensatory mitigation projects will replace
environmental functions that are lost as a result of permitted activities.

For more information on the compensatory mitigation rule visit:
http://www.usace.army.mil/cw/cecwo/reg/citizen.htm or
http://www.epa.gov/wetlandsmitigation. Information about the importance of
wetlands is available at: http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/.

SOURCE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Gene Pawlik, +1-202-761-7690, eugene.a.pawlik@usace.army.mil, or Doug Garman,
+1-202-761-1807, doug.m.garman@usace.army.mil, both of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers; or Shakeba Carter-Jenkins of the Environmental Protection Agency,
+1-202-564-4355, carter-jenkins.shakeba@epa.gov