Bush Aides Said to Rethink Wetlands Policy Changes

The Bush Administration is rethinking a proposal to redefine what constitutes wetlands after the government’s own experts criticized the plan as unworkable and unscientific, officials said Friday.

Following nationwide field tests, officials from agencies involved in wetlands regulation almost unanimously denounced the proposal in internal documents. The officials said it would lead to as much as an 80% reduction in current wetlands in some regions.

Many of the documents, reflecting the views of wetlands experts at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, urged that the policy not be implemented.

White House officials had directed that the regional assessments be kept private, but copies of many of them were obtained by news organizations Thursday.

White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the wetlands policy proposed last summer “is all under review” and that the field tests will be taken into account in a final rule.

An aide to EPA Administrator William K. Reilly said, “From what we have seen of the data thus far, it looks as if the proposed 1991 delineation manual (containing the revised definition) will have to be revisited and undergo serious review.”

The new definition of a wetland was proposed by the Administration in August as an attempt to ease concerns among business interests and some landowners that the existing definition was too broad.

Environmentalists denounced the proposal, saying it would destroy half of the nation’s currently designated wetlands.

Copies of the internal agency summaries described the Bush proposal as “inflexible,” “scientifically unsound,” “unworkable,” “unwieldy,” “having no scientific basis” and “technically deficient.”

The sharpest criticism was aimed at a proposed requirement that an area not qualify as wetland unless it is saturated for 21 consecutive days or inundated with water for 15 consecutive days. These requirements--as well as a new definition of the growing season and criteria on wetland vegetation--would disqualify thousands of acres of legitimate wetlands, the officials complained.