THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 27, 1995 TAG: 9507260009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By JOHN BAUM
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Who on your staff chooses photographs to accompany ``wetlands'' articles? The latest unrepresentative photo was published June 27. The picture was totally false because it did not illustrate the type of wetlands addressed in the article.
This error recurs frequently in national and local print stories and TV news reports about wetlands.
The subject is always upland hydric soils, which are not similar to swamps, marshlands or bogs. But the pictures show wildfowl swimming or flying in a beautiful combination water-marshland scene.
About 80 percent of the undeveloped high land in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake is composed of upland hydric soils, several feet higher than obviously wet swampland. The cropland areas produce some of Virginia's highest grain yields. Woodland areas are excellent for growing loblolly pines and many hardwood trees. Neither is possible to accomplish in marshland and swamps. Additionally, thousands of acres of upland areas have been successfully converted to residential, commercial, industrial and highway uses.
Marshlands, especially, and swampland have high environmental values, but almost no economic value, since they can no longer be legally filled. Much marshland in our coastal flatlands was filled in the past and contributed to flooding of low-lying areas and polluting of waterways (since the natural filters were destroyed.)
The 1972 Clean Water Act was excellent legislation to prevent filling natural wetland so silt could settle there instead of settling directly in our waterways, later justifying expensive dredging at public expense. Also, true wetlands are valuable as flood-stage areas and for fish and wildlife breeding and feeding.
Unfortunately, federal bureaucrats went beyond the intent of the law and added soils with slow internal drainage in 1977 as they wrote regulations to implement the law. There were no public hearings. The broadened wetlands definition didn't surface until 1987.
Articles and letters to the editor repeat statements (``wetlands filter nutrients and other pollutants from water'') that simply do not apply to high ground of the southern watersheds of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. These areas are generally 3 to 10 feet above swamp level and are basically flat, dropping 2 to 3 feet to the mile. There is no natural erosion potential on these upland areas draining across wide swamp and marshland filters into the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds of North Carolina.
In the Chesapeake Bay system, uplands begin to slope toward the water and are considered highly erodible when they fall 14 feet or more every 100 linear feet. Often there are almost no natural wetland buffers between the bottom of the slope and open water. It is important to maintain vegetated buffers in these situations to slow runoff and trap soil before it races down the slopes.
It is simply absurd to assert that any existing woodland between farmland or developed areas and the swamp must be preserved to stop erosion on coastal flatlands!
We now have federal employees and private consultants wasting taxpayers' money writing politically popular reports, without any scientific basis, to allow or disallow use permits on private or public lands. The inconsistency of their decisions is apparent to those of us who have professional training or practical experience with these soils.
Is it possible for some news professionals, preferably with some scientific training, to properly investigate the vast differences between natural wetlands and ``government-created wetlands''?
Meanwhile, please recognize that mixing photos and stories about the two ``wetlands'' types is wrong, whether done intentionally or through ignorance. MEMO: Mr. Baum is a Virginia Beach city councilman<
KEYWORDS: WETLANDS VIRGINIA BEACH by CNB