Word: wetlands
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...seasonal wetlands like the prairie potholes and seemingly dry areas like the edges of lakes and rivers and swamps that are actually waterlogged below ground level are also potential moneymakers for farmers, land developers and oil and gas drillers. Because of pressure from such groups, the Bush Administration has a new policy that endangers these fragile lands. Though the President has not technically violated his 1988 campaign pledge of "No net loss of wetlands," the official definition of a wetland is being narrowed. As much as a third of the 38.4 million hectares (95 million acres) of wetlands...
...government action clearly reflects the commonsense -- and incorrect -- notion that wetlands have to be wet. While swamps and marshes are more important, the dryer wetlands have their unique role in the environment. They are natural flood controls, and they also act as filtration systems for water passing through them. Some wetland plants absorb toxic pollutants like heavy metals...
...Administration is fuzzy about what constitutes a wetland, that is understandable. Before 1989, there was no official definition, and the four agencies that had jurisdiction over wetland development -- the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture -- often disagreed. Says the NWF's Douglas Inkley: "Sometimes the Corps would say one thing to a farmer, and a week later the EPA would come out and say something different...
...confusion was so great that the agencies finally got together in 1989 and wrote a manual, spelling out for the first time what a wetland is: any depression where water accumulates for seven consecutive days during the growing season, where certain water-loving plants are found and where the soil is saturated enough with water that anaerobic bacterial activity can take place. Development in such areas was forbidden without a special exemption. And anyone wanting an exemption from the rules had to prove that there was no practical alternative to wetlands destruction...
Allen remembers a lightning bolt. "I ran out of class to get Bob, who said, 'Oh my God!' " He recalls, "We rushed to the site, tramping around in the mud." Their solution: filter the postoxidation pond water through a man-made wetland before piping it into the bay. The process is called polishing. Algae and other potentially harmful microbes cling naturally to swamp plant roots, starting a food chain. Filter-feeding organisms in the marsh water eat them...