Recent Articles from FoBR Newsletters

Constructed Wetlands:
A Viable Substitute For Natural Wetlands?

Last fall, I inquired about a proposal to develop a 417-acre parcel southeast of the intersection of Routes 619 and 29 in Gainesville, Virginia. This development would impact 14.17 acres of nontidal headwater wetlands and intermittent streams. Approximately 9 acres of impact to jurisdictional waters has already been authorized. Mitigation for all impacts is proposed at an approved wetland mitigation bank called North Fork Wetlands Bank near Thoroughfare, Virginia. I was most interested in researching the pros and cons of constructed wetlands versus natural wetlands and learning how the process of developing on a natural wetland is approved. As I proceeded, I began to consciously question the whole concept in a more profound manner than I intended.

I am writing this as a concerned citizen. During my undergraduate work in biology I learned about wetlands mitigation banks. To borrow from a North Fork Wetlands Bank brochure, a wetlands mitigation bank is "an area of constructed, restored, or preserved wetlands consisting of quantified value units termed 'credits' that can be purchased by developers in advance of anticipated wetlands losses due to construction activities." In other words, a wetlands bank allows developers to destroy or permanently alter a natural wetland if they are willing to purchase space in a constructed wetland. To create a constructed wetland, a professional wetland developer, usually taking a small intermittent stream (flows during and after rain but does not hold water year round) or a perennial stream (holds water year round), builds an ecologically diverse landscape with open water, emergent plants, shrubs, forests, and upland buffers. The area is then preserved by a recorded conservation easement.

After learning about this whole concept one might ask the following questions: What exactly is a wetland? In any particular wetland are there components that are unique to that single system? If there are local variations, are they important? What aspect of development most affects a wetland? Is siltation the major problem? Or is it the dramatic increase in impermeable surfaces? If a stream's ecosystem is altered, what affect does it have on your life or the life in and around the stream? How much groundwater recharge occurs in a wetland? If there is groundwater recharge, how will a development affect the surrounding groundwater? Is there really any way to know how groundwater in one area is separated from groundwater in another area? How will forming a constructed wetland miles away from one community of citizens benefit that same community? Is the community around the altered natural wetland in fact harmed?

These questions could continue. The point is simple: If we cannot accurately answer these complex questions, should we be destroying something that has functioned naturally for thousands of years with the arrogance to think that we know how to replicate it? As a biologist, I am aware that we do not really know how all the micro-organisms living in the soil around a single tree interact and function together. In this light, we cannot know definitively how an entire wetland ecosystem functions.

In fairness to those who construct wetlands, I will say that man-made wetlands do function on some level. They attract birds and other wildlife and may actually increase the diversity of living organisms in the area where the wetland is built. Constructed wetlands may be a benefit if they replace those already destroyed, but a detriment if they simply give us license to destroy more.

I am left pondering why with all of our technology we cannot work with the land instead of always against it. Why can we not plan with sound ecological reasoning locally and particularly regionally, before we ever lift our shovels? The proposal concerning the development project of the wetland in Gainesville appears on the Army Corps of Engineers Web page (http://www.nao.usace.army.mil) under expired public notice 98-VO366-40. With a little skill at map reading, one could walk the land to be developed as I did, and until October 25, 2000, one had the chance to comment on whether this proposal should be approved.

If someone had discovered an endangered species, a major historic site, or anything of equal importance, then the district engineer may have decided to call a meeting to discuss those topics before the final permit was issued. The reality is that only an endangered species or ancient burial site could have possibly halted the project. This type of yardstick to decide on whether to develop an area is in itself flawed. I cannot speak for historic riches, but as far as endangered species, any biologist worth his weight will tell you the most effective way to preserve life in general is to save habitats-not to try to save individual species.

Behind it all, of course, is money. Much has already been spent just to bring the project to this stage, and one imagines it has only been spent because of the promise of making it all back and more. To gain those riches, must we squander the riches that we already have? Maybe our concept of success is defective. To be successful do you really need to acquire excessive material and monetary wealth? Why as a society are healthy relationships with family and friends, as well as enjoying and participating in music, art, and the general quest for knowledge, not considered the ultimate forms of success?

It is terrifying to think, as the great ecologist Rene Dubos said, that "the danger is not that we will all be killed by pollution and overpopulation...The immediate danger is that we are losing our sense of what the environment could be and should be...We are risking the loss of our sensual perceptions." In other words, the threat is not that humans will make the earth uninhabitable for the future, but that because we are so adaptable as organisms, our children will never even know what beauty once filled the landscape.

I give credit to the wetlands bank developers for their plans and vision, but one must question whether this new constructed wetland is a suitable substitute for a natural area altered by development.