How Trump EPA reform affects Delmarva's wetlands

Water pools into puddles here and there in a landscape covered with decaying leaves and peppered with bare trees. The earth sinks with each step in this seldom-trod swamp near a park in the Wicomico County hamlet of Bivalve.

Although this mucky spot lies just a few dozen yards from the Nanticoke River and is undeniably damp, it used to rest outside the jurisdiction of America's nearly 50-year-old clean water rule. That's because the area remains unconnected to the river and only brims with standing water at certain times of the year.

In 2015, the Obama administration expanded the law's reach to include such "isolated wetlands." But that federal oversight may not last much longer.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday compelling the Environmental Protection Agency to review the regulation with an eye toward removing obstacles to economic growth.

The move was greeted by cheers from Delmarva's farming sector and with worries from environmental advocates. The issue places into sharp relief a geographic feature unique to the peninsula that barely registers a blip on most relief maps: the Delmarva bay.

Also known as "whale wallows," Delmarva bays are mysterious depressions in the earth measuring anywhere from an acre to several acres in size. While their origins are debated, their environmental benefits are not, researchers say.

The pools provide an important habitat for rare plants and animals, such as herons, egrets and frogs. But since they didn't meet the EPA's definition of "waters of the United States," they could be tilled and developed with little or no regulatory oversight, said Judith Stribling, a Salisbury University ecology professor.

“Delmarva Bays are one of the ones that have just been run roughshod over," she said. “People look at them as a wet farm field. Some years I can't plant on them, but most years I can.”

Some of her concern, Stribling added, is offset by the fact that Maryland has had a so-called "nontidal wetland" protection law on the books since 1990. But it wasn't always strenuously enforced, particularly when the sprawling Ocean Pines development began booming in the 1990s.

“If you look at Ocean Pines, every 50,000-square-foot lot was grandfathered. You could do whatever you wanted," she said. "In the last 20 or 30 years, that has really improved a lot.”

"We are ready, willing and able"

The head of the agency that oversees the state's wetlands vowed to ensure that Trump's actions don't scale back protections for such areas.

"We are ready, willing and able to do more if necessary," Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles said in a statement. "Continued federal support under the Clean Water Act and other conservation laws will be important, even as states consider assuming more regulatory responsibility."

Some environmental advocates fear that rolling back the law could weaken efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay. If the federal government can't protect headwaters of its tributaries from harm, then waters farther downstream, including the bay itself, will suffer, said Jay Ford, executive director of the Virginia's Eastern Shorekeeper.

"Protecting our Chesapeake Bay means protecting the waters that feed into it, period," he said. "Any effort to prevent Clean Water Act protections throughout the entire watershed is an attack on clean water."

Farmers have long criticized the water rule as little more than a "land grab" and governmental overreach. The definition's expansion under Obama seems to extend federal oversight to their ditches, they say —  a claim officials dispute.

A Maryland Farm Bureau spokeswoman directed a DelmarvaNow reporter to a statement issued by the head of the national group.

“Farmers and ranchers have been calling for a common-sense approach to regulatory reform, and today the Trump administration responded to that call. EPA has too long been characterized by regulatory overreach that disregards the positive conservation efforts of farmers and threatens their very way of life," American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said.

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