Plan to Dilute Wetlands Laws Is Assailed : Environment: Group launches effort to scuttle President’s proposals. Bush says he wants to balance protections and development.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  The environmental group Amigos de Bolsa Chica is urging a letter-writing campaign to Congress against President Bush’s proposal for weakening federal protection of some wetlands areas.

“Changing the (federal) law will affect our ability to protect other coastal Southern California wetlands in Orange County and in Huntington Beach,” the Amigos group said in a warning letter to its members.

The newsletter asked wetlands supporters to write Bush and members of Congress, urging them to drop proposed changes in existing wetlands laws.

At issue is President Bush’s announcement on Aug. 9 that he wants changes in current federal regulations on wetlands, which prohibit any net loss of wetlands. Bush’s statement accompanied an Administration plan that he said would balance wetlands protection with economic development.

“The plan seeks to balance two important objectives--the protection, restoration and creation of wetlands, and the need for sustained economic growth and development,” the President said in his Aug. 9 statement.

Administration officials said the President’s plan would downgrade protection of some wetland areas.

Accompanying Bush’s Aug. 9 statement was a proposed new federal manual with complicated rules for defining soil saturation and vegetation in wetlands. Environmental groups charged that the proposed new rules would eliminate federal protection for millions of acres of land previously regarded as “wetlands.”

“What the Administration proposes is an ecological disaster--an outrage,” said Jim Tripp, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund.

The Amigos de Bolsa Chica, in its recent newsletter, has similarly attacked the Bush Administration’s plan.

“In spite of the fact that the President declared an Administration policy of no net loss of the nation’s existing wetlands base prior to his election, many in Congress and the Administration are poised to gut the current provisions which now provide only nominal protection (to the wetlands),” the Amigos newsletter said.

The newsletter said the proposed federal changes in how wetlands are defined would be “blatant manipulation of science for political expediency.”