PARK RIDGE-America's farmers and ranchers take exception to your Aug. 1 editorial "A retreat on wetlands protection." If EPA Administrator William Reilly's anemic attempt to right his agency's misguided wetlands crusade was, in your words, a "devil's bargain," what could you possibly consider the administration's common-sense realization that Reilly's plan itself would trample the property rights of U.S. citizens?

Thank goodness rational voices in the administration prevailed. Under previous rules, an area only had to be wet one week out of the growing season to be declared a "wetland." One rainy week could have jeopardized almost any farm field. Even if those areas were bone dry for the rest of the year, it wouldn't have mattered.

Under the new guidelines, a wetlands area now must be saturated at the surface for 21 consecutive days and have standing water for 15 days. This reflects our position that a wetland should be wet more than it is dry. When a productive corn field, a roadside drainage ditch or an irrigated semi-arid farm fall under government wetlands mandates, someone's logic has heen skewed. We can cite hundreds of what you call "anecdotal examples of bureaucratic vexation"--nightmares to the people affected.

One example is the story of Michael and Torri Schrock, a young couple from Corvalis, Ore. Their regulatory nightmare began in Novemher 1989, when they invested their savings in a 116-acre farm. Before purchasing, the Soil Conservation Service told them two of the acres were wetlands. Reasoning they could farm around that, they proceeded.

However, various government agencies kept changing the rules. The Schrocks invested $30,000 in irrigation equipment, but soon regulators told them their farm included 70 acres of wetlands. Amazingly, the original two acres were now not deemed to be wetlands. The Schrocks were told to cease all operations. Their lives and dreams are still on hold, their finances in serious jeopardy.

It may be too late for the government to erase the Schrock family's pain, but it's not too late to tell them they were right all along. That's what the administration has finally done, and rightly so. Logic has prevailed over arbitrary and technically flawed wetlands guidelines.

So much for the attempts to paint the champions of common-sense wetlands regulations as spoilers of the environment. If that were true, we certainly would never push for regulations and legislation that extend strict protection to true wetlands--swamps, hogs, marshes.

But we are doing that. We know true wetlands are valuable. We need to have the administration's logical wetlands rules, along with other regulations that classify wetlands by function, on paper in indelible ink. Legislation offers a degree of popular legitimacy and permanency that administrative fiat can only aspire to. That's why we continue to call for the passage of bills in Congress that recognize the need for wetlands conservation, but also the fact that not all wetlands are created equal.

All men, however, are created equal, and each has the right to personal property. The entire wetlands controversy ran roughshod over private property rights, which serve as the cornerstone for our entire economic system. By balancing property rights concerns and the need to protect true wetlands, the Bush administration has struck a logical balance.