Excerpt
THERE is perhaps no more contentious issue today than that of wetlands protection. There tend to be two views of the Bush Administration's wetlands policy. One is impatient for us to define “no net loss of wetlands,” a goal to which President Bush committed himself unequivocally as candidate and now as president. The other view is that we have lost all perspective in our efforts to regulate wetlands, have gone to war over inconsequential resources, arbitrarily encroached upon private property rights, and overreached in defining wetlands subject to our jurisdiction.
I want to respond to both lines of criticism and also to suggest some new elements of an evolving national policy on no net loss of wetlands. But first, I want to recommit the administration to that goal. We do not intend to back off from it. In fact, this administration has probably given more sustained, high-level attention to the formulation of wetlands policy, at the Domestic Policy Council in the White House and the Office of Management and Budget, Environmental Protection Agency, Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Soil Conservation …
Footnotes
William K. Reilly is administrator of the US. Environmental Protection Agency, 401 M Street, S.W, Washington, D.C. 20460. This article is based on a speech delivered March 7, 1991, at the “Saving the Land that Feeds America” conference sponsored by the American Farmland Trust.
- Copyright 1991 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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