Wetland Mediation.

[Jeff]

I find this totally asinine.  Over the last couple years I witnessed this hay field just north of pickford along m129, probably 80 acres Id guess, get graded completely flat wit a small berm created around it, then all these little jackstraw log piles arranged. through out.

My curiosity finally got the best of me wondering what the heck is this??
So I turned down the little gravel dead end side road to take a better look and found this sign that was beside the ag barn that stands there. This is a hay field in the middle of hay country. We have had as much rain in the last montn as I can ever remember up here and june, and no more puddles in there than in my driveway at the cabin.

This to me screams stupidity.


 

 

 

 

 

[Old Greenhorn]

I think I agree, barring further education. If you can get through this, it gives an explanation of the intended purpose: https://www.epa.gov/cwa-404/mitigation-banks-under-cwa-section-404 
 From what I read there it seems to be a bureaucratic 'solution' to reducing wetlands elsewhere and it used like carbon credits, peddled back and forth. Apparently some are creating these things so they can sell the credits, but they are supposed to be wetlands if I read it right, not dry field.
 Seems like  large scale government sponsored scam.

[KEC]

Similarly, near my home there is a property that someone bought. They did a bangup job of restoring an old shale bed by leveling it off, digging out a drain ditch and lining it with slope stone and putting a deluxe cattle fence around it. They then pastured cattle in there for a period of time and now they use it as a hayfield. I could be wrong, but I'm thinking they got money to do this thru a government program where they are supposed to use it for "agriculture" for at least so many years. This to address the problem of loss of farmlands. My suspicion is that, as soon as the time period passes that they have to keep it in agricultural use,  they will be building expensive houses on it. So, in realty, the taxpayers financed all these improvements to make it into prime building sites; exactly the opposite of the stated purpose of that program. Time will tell.

[WDH]

It is a big business.  My last four years with Weyerhaeuser was developing wetland mitigation banks in Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and North Carolina.  The Clean Water Act in 1972 specified that there could be no net loss of wetlands.  Many prior wetlands were converted to other uses.  In forestry, a lot of wetlands were ditched and drained and converted to pine plantation, or jurisdictional wetlands formerly in hardwoods were clear cut and converted to pine plantations.  In many cases the natural drainage was altered.

To offset loss of wetlands due to development, wetlands mitigation requires that any acre removed from wetland use such as housing development, road construction, etc. must be offset by taking a previously removed wetland and restoring the natural vegetation and drainage.  We took some of these pine plantations that were planted on cleared wetlands that were naturally in hardwoods, restored the natural drainage, removed the pine and replanted the hardwoods.  This creates wetland mitigation credits that are used to offset loss of wetlands due to development.  These credits must be purchases from the mitigation bank by the developer, whether private or government.  New roads, pipelines, etc. require mitigation.

These mitigation banks are given a fixed amount of credits by The Corps of Engineers.  The banks are set up as conservation easements that must remain in perpetuity.   When all the credits are sold, the bank must be maintained in its natural state with no timber harvesting or other man made activities of any type in perpetuity.  

What constitutes a jurisdictional wetland is not necessarily the presence of standing water but rather the drainage class of the soil and the presence of obligate wetland plants.  The soil must be saturated for a period of the time during the year which shows up in the color of the soil (dark colors black, blue, and gray caused by the absence of free oxygen which causes reducing condition that turn the iron in the soil blue and gray).  Bright colors like yellows, oranges, browns, and reds are fully oxidized colors that  indicate that the soil is never saturated during the year to the point that free oxygen is not available.  Iron rusts red and orange when fully oxidized but turns black, blue, and gray when saturated long enough in anaerobic conditions long enough during the year for the iron to be fully reduced.

Another requirement in defining what is a jurisdictional wetland is the presence of plants that only grow naturally in wetlands.  When a bank is being considered, extensive soil surveys and plant surveys are done to establish the nature and extent of the wetlands and The Corps of Engineers have to approve these surveys. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to meet the Corps requirements and takes years to get a bank fully approved.  It is the poster child for red tape.  It is a long and exhausting process.  

In Jeff's example, that property was not originally a hay field.  The natural wetland vegetation was removed and converted to hay grass.  The bank now has to regrade/restore the natural drainage and restore the natural plant community.  This will take years and lots of $.  This expense is borne by the owner of the bank and is offset by the sale of the wetland credits that are created from the restoration.  The goal is to sell the credits for a price that justifies the cost to establish and maintain the bank and to also provide a profit and rate of return for the bank owner.  

https://www.weyerhaeuser.com/land/mitigation-banking/

The permitted banks in the link above in Arkansas and Louisiana and one of the banks permitted in North Carolina were all started by me from 2007 to 2011.  

Does it make sense?  I found that sometimes it felt like the right thing to do on certain properties that were better returned to wetland use and and other times it did not make good walking around sense.  But, that was not for me to judge.  It was my job to find these sites on Weyerhaeuser's four million acres of timberlands in the South and evaluate them for potential wetlands mitigation banks.  My training in Soil Science and knowledge of plants made me well suited for the job.  

Remember, to qualify for a mitigation bank, the property must have been converted from its original wetland state into a non-wetland use.  Swamps or land that is currently functioning as a natural wetland does not qualify for a wetlands mitigation bank.  It must be from degraded or converted wetland being restored to its once natural state.

Wetlands mitigation is the Law of the Land whether we like it or not until something changes.  Dealing with The Army Corps of Engineers was very difficult and intensely bureaucratic and made me want to pull my hair out.  This explains my premature hair loss and my nervous tics . 

[barbender]

As always, thanks for the insight Danny! It's kind of like an eighty-something year old friend for mine told me once- "Hey, sometimes you come across a rock and think you discovered something new, but then you turn it over and there's all kinds of activity under there!"😊

[barbender]

And here I always thought foresters just rode around in their pickups and bothered the loggers🤷‍♂️😂

[OntarioAl]

Obviously nobody checked for depth to the water table or soil peculation as one has to do when applying for a septic field permit.
Wet lands have the ground water table at or near the surface that 80 acre plot would only qualify if the animals started lining up 2 by 2  ;D
Government gone wild
Cheers
Al
Ps they are almost if not more nutty up here
 

[wisconsitom]

Thanks WDH for supplying the proper context.

Did much wetland delineation in my working years and it's worth remembering these practices are attempts to mitigate the near-total disruption of the original hydrology of a site.  And to make up for new sites getting leveled, drained, compacted, filled.

Farmland isn't the natural state of any land anywhere.

[Walnut Beast]

Just like WDH says of many different criteria to meet. On my CRP they do different payment basis on soil types they have from the maps and arial they have. Guarantee they are not going to put you in a program or payout if you don't meet all the requirements. 

[beenthere]

Just another "feel good" Federal and State program.. build on wetlands but show creation of some wetland elsewhere to make up the difference. Explained well by WDH. Doesn't have to make sense, as long as it feels good. 

[Jeff]

Well, in this example the true stupidity of at least some implementations is exposed. This is in front of God and everyone going to sault st marie from the east and south. It is completely surrounded by farm land of the same elevation. The logs are arranged apparently for what?? Fish structure above the grade of m129???  

[nativewolf]

We have spent quite a lot of time trying to find a partner in this space.  Around the DC metro the value of  mitigation credits is enormous.  The problem is so little land available.   

From our investigation of the various vendors in this area we found a huge difference between the firms that just do it completely by the book and those that actually make an extra effort.  Just an amazing difference.

The banks range from pure Wetland Mitigation banks, to streamside preservation/remediation banks to nutrient banks (for Chesapeake Bay area in particular).   

The one thing we did learn is that it's possible to "game" the system by technically being compliant but it being just a bogus project.  However the regulators around here have really cracked down on the worst of the bogus sort of projects.  We've see streams taken all the way back down to the water level- imagine the deep stream banks all cut away and hauled off-  the original floodplain is exposed (just barely above the height of the stream and it explodes with buried dormant seedbanks.  Really amazing to see actually and this technique was developed in PA so kudos to the regulators in PA.  Those original seeds date back to precolinization and are so vigorous that they outcompete most invasive species.  

I can't speak for what you are seeing there or the quality of the regulators in MI.  Here in Virginia if it is a new wetland mitigation bank it's going to be adjacent to some sort of stream and will be very strictly designed.  It could be they are looking for upland wetlands in that area?  It will be highly regulated and monitored- if you are really curious as to the process and objectives call the regulator and ask for a meeting.  

[nativewolf]

Oh and the people paying for that are developers or infrastructure owners that are taking wetlands.  Even the  monitoring for the future is paid for by someone other than you and I (unless we were the ones building in a wetland).

[WDH]

Wetland Mitigation banks are regulated by The Corps of Engineers on the Federal level.  There are numerous Corps of Engineers Districts but I do not believe the the States have any regulatory involvement.  They did not when I was developing Wetlands Mitigation Banks.  

[wisconsitom]

Right.  The place where we did projects reported to the US-ACE branch in Green Bay, which was part of a region headquartered in Minneapolis St. Paul.  Same monitoring reports, as-builts, etc. were also forwarded to WI-DNR.

A major regional office receives thousands of request for wetland fill permits each year.

This stuff is the exact opposite of feel good.  It's just probably too little too late against what's going on.  But it is actual effort being put forth, not a TV commercial.  Each project varies and of course there's abuse.  But what'd they used to say, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

[mudfarmer]

Beavers are the original Wetland Mediators. Definitely recommend reading some modern literature about them, one book is
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
by Ben Goldfarb

Can't find right now or remember the names of decent other books/pubs.

One big role they play is to prevent the channel incision that nativewolf mentioned. Also hugely important in places like out west with the huge water issues of today.

Thanks WDH for your breakdown, this method of soil and plants used to determine wetland designations is how it was explained to me by a state Biologist at a recent stream crossing workshop here in NY. Here is an ACE publication https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Portals/74/docs/regulatory/Forms/Recognizing_Wetlands.pdf

[barbender]

I know in Wyoming, Game and Fish will relocate beavers to areas that could benefit from their activities. They will even dump a load of brush for them to work with if it is treeless country😊 My uncle tells me of streams out there that used to flow year round when there were beavers. Coyotes got out of control and killed all of the beavers. Without the beavers, now the streams are only seasonal.

[WDH]

Wetlands are plant and wildlife meccas. The law may not be perfect but there do need to be processes in place to protect and maintain them, otherwise they will all be filled and dredged Walmart parking lots. 

[Ianab]

Wetlands are an issue here too. Traditionally swamps were looked at as "wasted land". The Polynesians didn't have the machinery to clear them, but used them for fishing / hunting and collected flax leaves for their fibre (ropes / mats / baskets etc). But once Western agriculture arrived, most of the"swamp" land was drained. 

Now we don't have Beavers here, but it's still bad news if you are a Mudfish or Fernbird as they are now quite rare and various other plants like Swamp Maire are much less common. So hence a push to preserve  / restore the remaining patches. 

It's relatively easy to get Conservation efforts for the "big ticket" Items like Kauri / Redwood or Kiwi / Bald Eagles.  But most people don't even know Mudfish exist, and I've never actually seen a fernbird (Have heard them nearby, but they are masters of camouflage )

Mudfish: New Zealand freshwater fish
Fernbird/m?t?t?: Wetland birds
https://www.trc.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Guidelines/Biodiversity-infosheets/BioInfo-28-SwampMaireWaiwaka.pdf

I'd also suggest that even if the land in question never reverts to true "wetland", it's still going to play host to a lot of plants and animals that may otherwise become very rare, Might not be as impressive as an original old growth cypress swamp, but something will call it home, even if it's only the Nth American equivalent of a Mudfish.  ;) 

[Walnut Beast]

Wetlands are plant and wildlife meccas. The law may not be perfect but there do need to be processes in place to protect and maintain them, otherwise they will all be filled and dredged Walmart parking lots.

Absolutely well said!!

[barbender]

Wetlands also play a critical role in filtering runoff. The last 10-15 years has seen a lot of CRP land revert and get plowed under for "fence to fence" agriculture. In MN, rivers like the Minnesota River that flies through nothing but farm country have seen a marked decline in water quality, especially with elevated phosphates from fertilizer. With the land lacking any filtering capacity, it all runs right into waterways. I guess one upside is that the Minnesota River is growing some massive fish from all the fertilizer present in the food chain.

[mudfarmer]

That fertilizer runoff also causes algae blooms (some toxic) that impact water quality and plant/wildlife communities. 

Those beavers help reduce siltation, store water and drive it underground to restore water table levels, create habitat for other animals and plants, lots of stuff... Walmarts don't do anything good as far as I can tell ;D

It is hard to get behind the practice of allowing folks to fill in a swamp as long as they "restore" one somewhere else, but if the alternative is just letting them fill in a swamp and not doing anything else, whaddayagonnado?


We are looking to work with some local bureaucrats to "restore" a spring fed wetland on our property that has been considerably filled in with sand that erodes off the side of the road. Mostly sand they dump on the road all winter, but a lot that was exposed and allowed to erode after an "improvement" project by the highway dept. Don't really want to, but not allowed to and can't afford to take it on by ourselves.
Wetlands, I like 'em and it sounds like a bunch of you do too 8)

[twar]

Here in Scandinavia it's peat bogs...traditionally drained to expand/create (marginal) farmland, but more recently for building sites. There is also a huge market for home potting "soil", which is peat mixed with a bit of actual soil and some granulated calcium to lift the pH. Draining the peat bogs is now regulated or even banned, so we import our potting "soil" now, tons of it--in plastic sacks  .

[Ianab]

Wetlands also play a critical role in filtering runoff. The last 10-15 years has seen a lot of CRP land revert and get plowed under for "fence to fence" agriculture. In MN, rivers like the Minnesota River that flies through nothing but farm country have seen a marked decline in water quality, especially with elevated phosphates from fertilizer. With the land lacking any filtering capacity, it all runs right into waterways. I guess one upside is that the Minnesota River is growing some massive fish from all the fertilizer present in the food chain.

All true. 
Another detrimental effect is the clearing of forest cover right up to the stream banks, especially if animals are grazing. Now you have the fertiliser runoff (artificial AND natural), plus the sunlight now getting at the stream. Soon becomes an algae and weed infested mess. 
There has been a big push for Riparian planting on the local farms, to the extent that the Dairy Company made it a condition of the supply contract that farmers have a planting plan for any "exposed" streams. They have to get them fenced off, and can get subsidised native plants. By creating a small buffer zone there is some nutrient filtering plus the shade improves the water quality.  It's not so practical for larger rivers, but the water in those large rivers started out in the smaller streams, so if the water quality there can be improved, it helps downstream too. It's still a struggle to keep the water quality up and downstream rivers "safe" to swim etc. 

[nativewolf]

Wetland Mitigation banks are regulated by The Corps of Engineers on the Federal level.  There are numerous Corps of Engineers Districts but I do not believe the the States have any regulatory involvement.  They did not when I was developing Wetlands Mitigation Banks.  

Depends on the State for monitoring and compliance.  Here the power is in the state Dept of Env Quality (DEQ).   Someone has to have responsibility for ongoing local compliance and supervision and that's usually outsourced to the state.  That's why the pictures don't say contact the Corps.