THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 9, 1995 TAG: 9509090288
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Developers who destroy wetlands for building projects no longer have to work to restore them.
The Nature Conservancy will take money from developers to buy and preserve sensitive land.
Under a unique agreement, developers in Virginia no longer have to spend time and money restoring small wetlands they destroy while building new homes, piers and bulkheads.
They can let environmentalists do the dirty work.
Until now, the Army Corps of Engineers has required developers who destroyed between one and 10 acres of ecologically important wetlands to replace them by constructing man-made versions or by donating swampy tracts to the government.
But under a contract signed last month, the corps will allow developers to simply write a check to the Nature Conservancy, a private environmental group that buys and preserves sensitive lands, including thousands of acres in Hampton Roads.
The checks will be deposited in a conservancy-controlled bank account called the Virginia Wetlands Restoration Trust Fund. Money can only be used to buy new wetlands or help manage those already owned by the national group, said Linda Lundquist, Virginia director of protection at the conservancy.
Even if a developer converts wetlands outside of Hampton Roads, Lundquist said land purchases will be targeted in southeastern Virginia - specifically, in Chesapeake, near the Great Dismal Swamp and along Back Bay in Virginia Beach.
To date, no one has taken advantage of the program. But developers in three central Virginia counties are negotiating an adequate donation, said Gregory D. Culpepper, an environmental scientist at the Norfolk office of the corps, who spearheaded the project.
Only Louisiana and Texas have similar programs, Culpepper said.
``It's a first for us,'' he said. ``We just felt it was taking an awful lot of work and a lot of money to re-create some of these wetlands . . . and felt this is would be an easier way to do a better job of protection.''
Replacing natural wetlands, along with the important tasks of filtering pollutants, recharging groundwater and offering habitat to wildlife with man-made features has not exactly been a scientific triumph, officials and experts agree.
A recent study in Florida, for example, found that only 25 percent of man-made wetlands proved successful, said Thomas A. Barnard Jr., who heads the wetlands advisory program at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Barnard gave a mixed review to the new statewide program, however.
On the up side, he said, the program should help resolve a big problem in wetlands protection today: finding a better way to restore tiny parcels of swamp and marsh, which tend to disappear to development in bits and pieces.
``Instead of replacing a half-acre here or a couple thousand square feet there, you can pool your money, so to speak, and get one large parcel and protect it right,'' Barnard said.
On the downside, he worried that the restoration process will become too easy for developers, that destroying wetlands will be perceived as just another cost of doing business.
The conservancy worries about that, too.
Indeed, if the program is found not to be benefitting the environment, the conservancy can cancel the contract after 90 days, Lundquist said.
There also was a concern, she said, that the agreement might be perceived as the conservancy becoming too close to government and developers, instead of an independent environmental group.
To maintain a safe distance, the conservancy is not allowed to know who is applying for a donation or what they are offering.
``One day a check will arrive in the fund and that's it,'' Lundquist said.
``That's all we want to know.''
KEYWORDS: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION WETLANDS by CNB