Saving wetlands: a broken promise (WA state)

[Barrett808]

Saving wetlands: a broken promise
By Craig Welch and Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporters

The state's commitment to our fragile wetlands dates back two decades.

On Dec. 12, 1989, Gov. Booth Gardner announced that half the state's wetlands were gone, and 2,000 acres more were vanishing each year. So he issued an order: For each marshy piece of ground paved, another would be created to replace it.

Not only would the state stop losing wetlands, Gardner vowed, but wetlands in Washington would actually increase.

Twenty years later, the promise has proved hollow. Destruction of wetlands, vital to the health of Puget Sound, is still routine, and attempts to replicate them are too often a failure.

This year, even as Gov. Christine Gregoire, the newly formed Puget Sound Partnership and teams of scientists all work to protect and restore Puget Sound, the management of wetlands in Washington remains in disarray. It's part of a pattern of failure that taints Washington's "green" veneer. While we may not be breaking the law, we are breaking our promise to protect Puget Sound:

• The rules for wetlands protection are mired in a regulatory swamp. Regulations are varied, and efforts to protect one wetland can be wiped out by upstream neighbors operating completely within the law.

• Time and again, efforts to re-create nature by replacing wetlands fail, if the effort is made at all. The science is relatively new and evolving, and wetlands replacements are often allowed to be afterthoughts for developers. Even the most well-planned, well-financed efforts can go awry.

• Oversight of wetland projects is weak or nonexistent. At every level — city, county, state and federal — job one for most agency staffers is promptly issuing more permits, not following up to make sure that mitigation intended to make up for wetland destruction actually works.

Even the state's highest environmental officials concede the system is broken. But officials insist they are racing to make changes. "I'm bound and determined to make them happen quickly," said Jay Manning, the director of the state Department of Ecology.

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004407515_growth_wetlands15m1.html