By Dr. Robert Thorson
Rumors of war are on the horizon. Political wars pitting deeply held convictions about private property against equally held convictions about the interconnectedness of all things. One side is fueled by the first law of private property: that it belongs to someone and not everyone. The other side is fueled by the first law of ecology: that everything is connected to everything else.
Battles will be fought in wet backyards of America. The small and seemingly insignificant wetlands and watercourses that play vital, though often invisible roles in the health of downstream waters. Consider the leafy puddle that’s slow to drain. It’s a vernal pool. Or the hollow that trickles in spring. It’s an ephemeral stream.
This isn’t old news. You’re thinking about WWI (wetlands war I), which followed passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972. That dealt with readily identifiable wetlands having a nexus to navigable water, and therefore managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The new news is about WWII, imminently under the command of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Last September, in an initial salvo, the EPA’s Science Advisory Board released a report: “Connectivity of Streams and Wetlands to Downstream Waters: A Review and Synthesis of the Scientific Evidence.” Below the title is a note stating that this draft was released to facilitate public comment on its technical accuracy and policy implications. In other words, comments about nature vs. culture, about the quality of the science vs. the magnitude of political push back. Above the title is a header stating that the draft can’t be cited or quoted because it’s still under preparation. And on the following page is a bold disclaimer stating that the report doesn’t (yet) represent government policy.
This mountain of defensive maneuvering seems unnecessary. Our landscape, regardless of scale, is one thing, not many — a unified natural entity on which fragmented land claims have been arbitrarily superimposed. Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way in his famous extended essay “Nature”: “When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity.”
The EPA report reviews and synthesizes more than 1,000 books and journal articles from the peer-reviewed scientific literature. These are woven into a fortress of unassailable arguments to support three self-evident conclusions. First, that small streams — even those that are dry most of the year — exert a powerful cumulative influence on downstream waters. Not as a general rule, but through specific physical, chemical and biological transfers. Second, that small wetlands, ponds and seepages with bi-directional links to adjacent watercourses are indivisible from the stream they serve. Consider, for example, the habitat links between an oxbow lake and the active floodplain channel. Third, wetlands and ponds with one-way links pass beneficial effects both downstream and upstream.
Indeed, seemingly insignificant parts of the landscape mosaic pass their benefits downstream. The EPA report lists five such links. They are sources for life-giving materials such as water and food. They are sinks for bad things, notably eroded sediment and surface contaminants. They are transformers; chemical reaction chambers in which nutrients, and contaminants are changed, usually from adverse to beneficial. They are reservoirs that buffer the irregularities of flow, mitigating both floods and droughts. They are refuges, places of protection for organisms that have as much right to the landscape as we do.
Of course, many landowners and industry groups have plugged their ears. According to a news report in the Jan. 3 Science, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the U.S. House science committee, calls the report a “massive power grab of private property.” The Waters Advocacy Coalition, a group of 30 trade associations opposing the policy implications, is stocking its arsenal.
When WWII comes, I’ll be standing the side of nature. Where will you be standing?