"My position On wetlands is clear. No matter how small they are, they are too important to lose."
-- President Bush, 1988

By DANA TIMS
Correspondent, The Oregonian

Mike Schaeffer's plans to build a much-needed housing development in Corvallis were all set.

The Portland-area businessman picked out a prime, 30-acre parcel of vacant land, which the city had already laced with the streets, sewers and electrical book-ups necessary to build. City approval of Schaeffer's final building scheme was all that separated Corvallis from its stated goal of increasing badly depleted housing stocks.

Then in November, the problem hit, stopping the project dead in its blueprints.

"It turned out tbat under new federal guidelines, 25 of our 30 acres were considered wetlands," Schaeffer said. "What was a done deal is now at a standstill."

Landowners and developers throughout the Willamette Valley and much of western Oregon have learned the same painful lesson in recent months. Fanned to a boiling point by new federal definitions, the issue of wetlands preservation is here to stay.

"It's a very new issue," said Martha Pagel, who as director of the Division of State Lands oversees much of the state's wetlands regulatory process. "And basically it creates a whole new ballgame."

In addition to Corvallis, areas most affected by the apparent expansion of regulatory definitions include the Columbia South Shore industrial site east of the Portland International Airport, the Johnson Creek Basin in Portland, the bulk of west Eugene's Industrially zoned lands, sections of Troutdale and portions of the Oregon coast.

[INSERT IMAGE HERE
PEGGY SHEKEL
Caption:
Ken Blerly (left), wetlands program manager for the Division of State Lands, and Martha Pagel, division director, tour the proposed site for an expansion of the Spectra-Physics electronics plant in West Eugene with Steve Gordon, a planner for the Lane Council of Governments.]

Areas of Eastern Oregon, partlcularly Baker Valley and the Grande Ronde Valley, stand to be hit as well.

What does it mean?

State officials, from the governor on down, are scrambling for clarifications on just what a new federal manual defining wetlands really means.

But no one is disputing calculations that the guidelines mean a doubling or even tripling of wetlands areas that, in many cases, are located precisely where a number of cities and towns literally have paved the way for industrial development.

"The real effect of the change is to recapture areas subject to regulation that were not historically subject to regulation," sald Ken Bierly, wetlands program manager for the Division of State Lands. "It has produced a massive expansion of jurisdiction."

The state is currently putting together the first comprehensive inventory of its wetlands. The effort is expected to be completed by September. Few involved in the process question the need to protect the nation's wetlands.

Fully one-half of the wetlands that existed in the country 200 years ago have been filled, dredged, drained or diked through aggressive public policies aimed at reclaiming massive tracts of boggy swampland, most often for agricultural uses.

That figure approaches 90 percent in lands surrounding and inside western Oregon cities and along the Columbia Gorge, according to conservationists' estimates.

New scientific understanding about the value of wetlands has led to the belief that they are disproportionately valuable in relation to their size. In addition to providing habitat for water-loving plants and animals they often provide flood control, water-quality protectionand streambank stabilization.

But the latest dispute over wetlands policies appears to be one more rooted in definitions than in depletion.

Until the new federal manual came out last January, lands historically used for farming were exempt from most wetlands regulations, including the need to obtain building permits on such sites as called for by the federal Clean Water Act of 1972. Such lands accounted for 87 percent of the nation's historic wetlands losses, Bierly said.

Traditionally, wetlands were defined as areas exhibiting three specific characteristics: predominantly wetland plant species, wetland soil types and standing water during a portion of the growing season.

Then, on Jan. 10, 1988, four federal agencies adopted a new manual for delineating wetlands. Areas converted to farm uses were classified as "disturbed areas." As such, if an on-site review concluded that the three factors were present at any time -- even dating to pre-antiquity -- the area was to be considered a wetland falling under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regulatory definition.

The resulting shock waves now reverberating through local planning departments and private development offices have not stopped at the state's borders. Even the respective federal agencies that issued the new manual continue to wrangle over whether definitions of what constitutes a wetland area have really changed.

"There will be some turmoil, but the definitions have not changed at all," said Kathy Kunz, an environmental protection specialist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Seattle office. "In reality, it only defined what should have heen regulated all along."

Bill Sobolewski, chief of the Water Programs Section for the EPA's Oregon Operations Office, disagreed.

He said " we probably did" expand the definition of wetlands. "We included disturbed and agricultural areas that previously had been exempted."

High Impact

Regardless of the semantics, in areas such as Corvallis and Eugene -- which spent $12 million preparing 500 acres of vacant land for industrial development -- the impact of the new manual is being felt.

"This hasn't stopped any projects yet, but I can definitely see it killing certain ones," said Cynthia Solle, Corvallis planning director. "It's a difficult situation for us to deal with."

A third-phase expansion of Spectra-Physics' electronics plant in Eugene has been put on hold due to wetlands considerations. Chuck Missar, the company's facilities manager, estimated that $650,000 will be spent on both assessing the impact of the expansion and mitigating damages to wetlands before the project is completed.

"A lot of this ground is uncharted," Missar said. "If anybody had told me three years ago I'd be an expert on wetlands right now, I'd have met that with raised eyebrows to say the least."

Conservationists express little or no sympanthy for landowners caught in the crunch.

"As far as I'm concerned, land speculation is no different from playing the stock market," said Mike Houck, urban naturalist for the Audubon Society of Portland. "You play the game, you take your chances."

Houck agrees with the EPA's Kunz when it comes to wetlands definitions. "It's a ridiculous argument to say there are all of a sudden more wetlands out there," he said. "They were always there. It just so happens that people finally got their act together and came up with a uniform methodology for identifying them."

A three-step process for proceeding with developments in wetland areas is spelled out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is charged with approving applicants' permits. The goal of the process, as spelled out by President Bush during a speech in 1988, is "no net loss" of wetlands.

The 1989 Oregon Legislature addressed wetlands by approving Senate Bill 3. The measure adopted federal wetlands definitions, called for the statewide wetlands inventory currently being conducted and required local planners to notify applicants left facing a wetlands designation on their property.

Potential developers must first prove that a need exists to fill, dam or dredge wetland areas. They must then outline what practical alternatives are available. Finally, it if appears that the activity is warranted, they must submit plans to mitigate the damage either by enhancing adjacent wetlands or by creating new ones.

A joint memorandum signed by both the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers states that, in most cases, one acre of wetlands must be enhanced or created for every acre removed.

Yet many questions remain, and it doesn't appear there will be answers any time soon.

"Valuable resources certainly have to be protected," said Portland's Mike Schaeffer, who is slated to meet soon with Army Corps officials to review plans for his stalled housing development in Corvallis. "But for us to move forward, we need some certainty. That's what land-use planning is supposed to be all about."