New rules to help man-made wetlands

With wetlands being covered by development every year in Washington, state and federal agencies are trying to improve the odds that the ecologically critical land actually gets replaced.

Yesterday, several agencies announced new guidelines meant to help improve a flawed system by allowing private developers and public agencies to create man-made wetlands to replace the natural ones that are lost to roads, homes and shopping centers.

The recommendations should partly remedy problems with newly created wetlands often failing to work as promised, said Andy McMillan, a manager for the state Department of Ecology.

"It's not fair to the public to tell them we are doing our job and getting replacement of wetlands when they're filled, when the studies show clearly we are often not," he said.

Among the changes in guidelines to be used by the state Department of Ecology, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:

• Regulators will put less emphasis on replacing wetlands that are next to destroyed ones. Instead, they will focus on creating other wetlands where they are most likely to succeed, even if it's miles away. This will further open the door to "mitigation banking," an emerging strategy in which a landowner pays for a portion of a larger wetland project located somewhere else.

• The state will work harder to police man-made wetlands to make sure they are working and being maintained.

• Agencies will be more leery of letting landowners mitigate a destroyed wetland by "enhancing" existing wetlands with such things as more trees. A state study found such efforts frequently fail.

Wetlands are important for animal and fish habitat and flood control. So before filling one, a landowner must get permits that often require replacing the lost wetland. But a 2002 Ecology Department study found that the projects failed more than half the time.

The new guidelines could prove particularly helpful when consultants don't have enough training or experience, said Dyanne Sheldon of Sheldon and Associates, a company that works on wetlands mitigation primarily for projects by public agencies.

"I think there's a lot of consultants and designers who are out there who don't know what they're doing," said Sheldon, who also teaches wetland science and management at the University of Washington.

At the same time, replacement-wetlands design already has been improving.

Dee Arntz, who heads the environmental group Washington Wetlands Network, said she was pleased that there would be better monitoring of replacement wetlands. But she said she would rather see developers required to put up bonds to pay to fix failed replacement wetlands.

And she said she is not convinced that mitigation banking will solve the problem of poorly performing man-made wetlands.

"We're fiddling around with nature," she said.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com