A crew on Monday began removing a storm-battered, dilapidated waterfront boardwalk near Jacksonville’s Northeast Creek Park boat launch area.

The removal marks the first step in a series of park improvements and additions, including a new boardwalk, fishing pier that will be built out into Northeast Creek and parallel to the shore, and an Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant kayak launch.

The Northeast Creek Park restoration project also entails construction of a new living shoreline and wetlands restoration.

Work to rebuild and expand the site is expected to begin in later winter into the spring of 2027, according to a city release.

“We are excited to be able to get this project underway,” Jacksonville Stormwater Manager Pat Donovan-Brandenburg stated in the release. “Having a safe boardwalk and pier as well as adding a kayak launch for public is important to improving quality of life here in Jacksonville. Equally important, is addressing the erosion we see along our waterways due to storms and water rise. Expanding on the wetlands and installing a living shoreline will work to preserve this.”

The project has been funded through a multi-year, $16 million National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant the city was awarded in October 2024. Funds from that grant are also being used to expand the city’s Oyster Highway project, Scales Creek flood mitigation and watershed restoration, and shoreline and wetland restoration for Phillips Park and Chaney Creek.

These projects will be headed by the city’s stormwater and engineering divisions.

Featured Image

An American alligator sunning at North River Wetlands Preserve in Carteret County slides in for a dip recently as March temperatures rose. The 6,000-acre preserve is the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s project to return farmland back to its original state and to use the wetlands to naturally treat polluted runoff. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review. Photo: Doug Waters

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust plans to buy a sprawling tract of land off one of Wilmington’s busy corridors to convert it into a publicly accessible nature preserve.

The New Hanover County Board of Commissioners on Monday authorized county staff to negotiate a purchase and sale agreement with the Coastal Land Trust for an approximately 60-acre tract at 3990 Independence Boulevard.

The organization plans to buy the land, referred to as the Flossie Bryan tract, for $3 million.

Bryan was a longtime Wilmington resident and licensed practical nurse who worked at James Walker Memorial Hospital, which operated for more than 60 years until it closed after New Hanover Regional Medical Center opened its doors in 1967.

Bryan willed the property to the county and asked that it be preserved, offering a natural, undeveloped space for public benefit, according to a Coastal Land Trust release.

“Flossie Bryan left an extraordinary gift to this community, and we take that trust seriously,” Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks stated in the release. “This property sits in the middle of one of the fastest-growing residential corridors in New Hanover County. Protecting it permanently as a nature preserve means generations of Wilmington residents will have access to irreplaceable green space, right where they live. We are grateful to the Board of Commissioners for their partnership on this property, and for their vision and foresight in securing full ownership of the property in 2025, which created the opportunity to ensure its long-term conservation.”

The Coastal Land Trust aims to work with county staff to finalize a purchase and sale agreement, with closing proposed to occur on or before Dec. 31, 2027.

Commissioners will review the sale agreement before final approval.

Within the tract are more than seven acres of mature longleaf pine forest, among the few remaining unprotected longleaf pine savanna habitats in New Hanover County. And, there are more than 20 acres slated for longleaf pine restoration.

Natural freshwater wetlands and headwater tributaries of Barnards Creek are also on the property.

Once under the Coastal Land Trust’s ownership, the preserve will be developed in phases to include a parking area and natural train system, which will be largely unpaved, designed for nature-first recreation and outdoor learning, and will incorporate Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible areas.

Coastal Land Trust’s longer-term plans for the property include an onsite environmental education facility.

“The Flossie Bryan tract offers a rare opportunity to protect and restore one of the most ecologically important habitat types in our region, in the county with the highest population density along the North Carolina coastal plain,” Kenneth Lingerfelt, Coastal Land Trust director of land protection said in a release. “Conserving this property means protecting water quality in the Barnards Creek watershed and ensuring that this irreplaceable longleaf pine habitat is never lost.”

The Coastal Land Trust plans to launch a public and private fundraising campaign to raise the $3 million needed to buy the tract.

The Coastal Land Trust has created and manages a number of nature preserves across eastern North Carolina, including Brunswick Nature Park, the Latham-Whitehurst Nature Park in Craven County, Brice’s Creek Nature Preserve in New Bern, and Springer’s Point Preserve on Ocracoke Island. The organization also manages the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden in Wilmington in partnership with the city.

This story has been updated to include a corrected description of land ownership. Information initially provided to Coastal Review had incorrectly identified the owner.

More people moved to North Carolina last year from different parts of the country than any other state in the nation.

North Carolina’s population grew by almost 150,000 people, trailing behind only Texas and Florida, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released last month.

As political leaders grapple with the demands that growth is placing on essential services like water and sewer, public safety and education, pressure is mounting on conservation groups to acquire, conserve and preserve land.

This month, more than 2,000 acres in coastal counties have been secured for permanent protection from development.

These newly protected areas are filled with natural landscape features that reduce flood risk, improve water quality, and provide habitat for plants and animals that are increasingly getting squeezed out by encroaching development.

In Brunswick County, one of the fastest growing in the state, North Carolina-based conservation nonprofit Unique Places to Save acquired land that serves as a corridor between two protected natural areas, bridging what amounts to nearly 10,000 acres of conserved landscape.

“We really want to be able to maintain large, connected natural areas for habitat for species and to maintain biodiversity of our natural areas,” Unique Places to Save Executive Director Christine Pickens told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview. “And, particularly, in the southeast of North Carolina, we have some really cool endemic species and really wonderful habitats that you don’t find anywhere else.”

Within the 1,040-acre tract nestled between the towns of St. James and Boiling Spring Lakes are forested wetlands, Carolina bays, sandy pine and wet sandy pine savanna.

The tract, referred to as Boiling Springs Wilderness, specifically connects thousands of acres of privately conserved land including Orton with the North Carolina Boiling Spring Lakes Plant Conservation Preserve.

“When you connect these large areas, you’re connecting a mosaic across the landscape and there’s tiny variations of habitat availability,” Pickens explained. “What that does is allow species that use that area for habitat or refuge or migration to use those slight variations of habitat. When we experience extremes in weather, precipitation or drought or big storms, having just a little bit of wiggle room in terms of available habitat goes a long way to allowing species to be resilient to some of these extremes and some of these changes.”

Habitat that is free from being sliced up by ditches or roads is valuable to species that rely on that habitat, she said.

Take the red cockaded woodpecker, for example. These birds, which were reclassified in late 2024 from endangered to threatened, live in groups, or clusters, helping each other raise their young.

They depend on large, connected natural areas – typically anywhere from 125 to 200 acres – where living pine trees, preferably mature, longleaf pine forests, grow.

Boiling Springs Wilderness includes varying types of soils that support different sets of plants, trees, shrubs and forbs, more commonly referred to as herbs.

A good deal of pond pine and a “little bit” of young longleaf pine grace its landscape, Pickens said.

The headwaters of Orton Creek are within the project area, as are wetlands that blanket the Castle Hayne aquifer, a drinking water source for thousands of Brunswick County residents and tens of thousands in other coastal North Carolina areas.

“That’s a long-term way to protect water quality,” Pickens said. “The areas around streams act as buffers to absorb nutrients, runoff, excess components in surface water that soak in, and they get absorbed by the plants and the roots and the soils around streams. That prevents excess nutrients getting into waterways.”

Then there are the wetlands, which function like nature’s sponges, absorbing stormwater that might otherwise flood developed properties.

“Every chance we get to conserve wetlands is really important right now,” Pickens said.

That’s because state lawmakers decided to align North Carolina’s definition of wetlands with that of the federal government, which is in the process of changing the interpretation of waters of the United States that may omit protections for millions of acres of wetlands in the state.

“It may result in more wetlands being nonjurisdictional, therefore a lot more likely to be converted to uplands through ditching and draining. These conservation easements are perpetual. Once we protect it, that’s it,” Pickens said.

The Boiling Springs Wilderness project was funded through a $3.68 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant.

Unique Places to Save will own and manage the tract, while the state will hold the conservation easement. The Coastal Land Trust will steward that easement.

Last year, Unique Places to Save applied for another state Land and Water Fund grant to protect about 500 acres of predominately wetlands between the town of St. James and N.C. Highway 211.

“We’ve got a provisional award from the Land and Water Fund so if they have enough funding we may get funded this year for that effort,” Pickens said.

She touted efforts among other groups that work to conserve land throughout the state, including the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina Plant Conservation Program, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, and Cape Fear Arch to name a few.

Tyrrell County parcel transferred

Last week, national nonprofit The Conservation Fund finalized the transfer of ownership of about 1,550 acres of coastal wetlands and forestland in Tyrrell County to the Coastal Federation.

“This partnership reflects years of careful conservation planning and cooperation,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis stated in a release. “This acquisition protects important coastal wetlands that help filter water, support fish and wildlife habitat, and provide natural flood buffering in on the of the state’s most ecologically significant regions.”

Portions of the Tyrrell County property, which is valued at an estimated $1.7 million, are in the Land and Water Fund’s Stewardship Program, one designed to establish, monitor and enforce perpetual conservation agreements.

The property will be included as part of the Coastal Federation’s Land for a Healthy Coast program, which focuses on protecting estuaries, reducing polluted runoff, buffering floods, and boosting long-term coastal resilience.

“Some lands are simply too important to risk losing,” Coastal Federation founder and senior adviser Todd Miller said in the release. “When a property protects water quality, supports fisheries, and strengthens the natural defenses of the coast, we believe it’s our responsibility to step forward and ensure it is permanently conserved and well managed.”

The two agencies that enforce the Clean Water Act have proposed changes to the waterbodies considered jurisdictional, or under federal protection, and the deadline for the public to comment is here.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers published on Nov. 20 in the Federal Register the “Updated Definition of ‘Waters of the United States,’” opening the public comment period that ends 11:59 p.m. Monday, Jan. 5. Information on how to submit comments is on the EPA website.

The agencies said the proposed rule revises “the regulations defining the scope of waters federally covered under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, as amended, also known as the Clean Water Act, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency.”

The agencies argue that their proposed amendments to the “waters of the United States” definition when finalized, will provide clarity and align with the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Sackett case that the “Clean Water Act extends to relatively permanent bodies of water connected to traditional navigable waters and wetlands with a continuous surface connection to those waters ‘so that there is no clear demarcation between “waters” and wetlands.’”

Environmental organizations argue that the proposed changes will gut basic water quality protections, which were already compromised by the 2023 Supreme Court decision on Sackett v. EPA that essentially left nontidal wetlands without protection. Nontidal wetlands are usually in floodplains along rivers and streams, in isolated depressions surrounded by dry land, along the margins of lakes and ponds, and in other low-lying areas where the groundwater intercepts the soil surface or where precipitation sufficiently saturates the soil, according to the EPA.

“When it comes to the definition of ‘waters of the United States,’ EPA has an important responsibility to protect water resources while setting clear and practical rules of the road that accelerate economic growth and opportunity,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a Nov. 17 press release. “EPA is delivering on President Trump’s promise to finalize a revised definition for WOTUS that protects the nation’s navigable waters from pollution, advances cooperative federalism by empowering states, and will result in economic growth across the country.”

Environmental Defense Fund Coasts and Watersheds Science Senior Manager Dr. Adam Gold told Coastal Review that the “proposed rule could increase the pace of wetlands loss and lead to more flooding impacts for communities. Wetlands loss increases downstream flooding impacts, and at the same time, any new infrastructure built in former wetlands is also at increased flood risk.”

Under the agencies’ proposed rule, the term “waters of the United States” would include “(1) traditional navigable waters and the territorial seas; (2) most impoundments of “waters of the United States;” (3) relatively permanent tributaries of traditional navigable waters, the territorial seas, and impoundments; (4) wetlands adjacent (i.e., having a continuous surface connection) to traditional navigable waters, impoundments, and tributaries; and (5) lakes and ponds that are relatively permanent and have a continuous surface connection to a traditional navigable water, the territorial seas, or a tributary.”

The difference between the existing rule and proposed is that the existing rule includes an interstate waters category and the word “interstate” is in front of the lakes and ponds category. The agencies propose deleting both.

The agencies also recommend revising the existing exclusions from the Clean Water Act permitting process for waste treatment systems, prior converted cropland and ditches, and adding an exclusion for groundwater, as well as definitions for “continuous surface connection,” “ditch,” “prior converted cropland,” “relatively permanent,” “tributary,” “and waste treatment system.”

Carolina Wetlands Association Executive Director Rick Savage also has concerns about the flooding that could be unleashed on communities if these proposed changes go through, and the damage to water quality.

He said communities are going to see developers take wetlands without a permit.

“These wetlands are often buffers against flood waters. if they are developed then guess what happens? The flood waters just go inland to the community,” Savage said, adding that water quality could suffer as well, because of the potential for more pollution to pass into streams.”

North Carolina Sierra Club Deputy Director Erin Carey told Coastal Review that ultimately, “the American public should be very concerned that the federal agency tasked with ensuring clean water, clean air, and the protection of our natural environment seems determined to undermine that responsibility. With this proposed change, the EPA claims to seek clarity in regulation, but this rule would serve only to allow industry to profit from environmental destruction, and the ruination of our natural resources.”

Gold said that according to the fund’s analysis published September 2024 in Science that modeled different interpretations of the Sackett decision, the modeled scenario that best aligns with the proposed rule open for public comment now would result in 82 million acres, or 91%, of nontidal wetlands in the contiguous United States estimated to be without Clean Water Act protections. 

About WOTUS, Sackett decision

The Clean Water Act is the revised and restructured Federal Water Pollution Control Act, enacted in 1948 to protect waterways that are used for or could be used for commerce.

“The 1972 amendments to the Clean Water Act established federal jurisdiction over ‘navigable waters,’ defined in the Act as the ‘waters of the United States,’” according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But that’s as far as the definition goes, leaving the two agencies that jointly enforce the regulations to define the term under statute, and have had to determine what geographical features such as wetlands, streams and rivers fall under “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, and, therefore, under federal protection under the Clean Water Act.    

In the decades since, that definition has undergone several amendments, most recently in 2023 to conform to the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision.

The Sacketts are an Idaho couple who were fined by the EPA for backfilling wetlands on their property near Priest Lake. The Sacketts filed a lawsuit asserting that the wetlands were not directly connected to the lake, a navigable body of water protected by the Clean Water Act. Justices ruled in favor of the couple and put parameters on “waters of the United States.”

Justices state in the May 2023 majority opinion that the Clean Water Act’s use of “waters” only refers to geographical features described in everyday language streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes “and to adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.”

The ruling narrowed the definition of “waters of the United States, stripping away protection under the Clean Water Act for isolated wetlands, or those without an obvious connection to navigable waters.

The two federal agencies, under the Biden administration at the time, had published a revised definition in January 2023 that was then amended that September to conform to Sackett.

Shortly after the second Trump administration took office, the agencies began a campaign to change the amended 2023 WOTUS that it called “overly broad” in a news release Monday and “failing to fully implement the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency.”

Savage explained that the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, was based on relationships with navigable waters. Then in 1977, the Corps of Engineers came up with the wetlands definition manual, which set the process for how wetlands were defined, based on hydrology, hydrophilic vegetation and hydric soils.

“During that time, almost any wetland was protected because you could find some relationship to​ a navigable water, even if it’s over land, but now you know that’s all changing,” he said, and the reason it started changing was because the Supreme Court got involved.

“That was in 2006 and ever since then, it is going around and around and up and down and through. You know, nobody knows what the rules are half the time. I mean, there’s been a couple of times where half the states were under one set of rules and the other half are under another set of rules because of litigation,” Savage said.

On the state level

Savage said regarding the proposed rule change that there’s two ways to look at it: the federal level and the state level.

“Right now, as far as North Carolina is concerned, it’s not looking good, period,” he said, because of the Farm Bill that made state and federal regulations to protect wetlands the same.

During summer 2023, the General Assembly approved language in Senate Bill 582, often called the Farm Bill, to align the state’s definition of wetlands with the federal. The definition reads: “Wetlands are classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by” the Army Corps and EPA.

Savage said he’d heard that a few legislators were starting to reconsider the move, and he said part of it is because the state government is funneling millions of dollars to use nature-based solutions, like wetlands, to mitigate flooding issues. “However, what the heck is this about, not wanting to protect the very resources we need to use to protect our communities? And I think that might be having a little bit of an effect.”

Savage said they’re working with the Southern Environmental Law Center and other groups to make changes, but there’s not a lot that can be done at the state level in North Carolina because of Dillon’s rule, which means that local governments only have as much power as the state specifically allows.

“Anything a locality may want to do to protect wetlands, the state legislature can immediately overturn it” via legislation, Savage said. “So, it’s not a lot that can be done there.”

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath told Coastal Review in an earlier interview that, while this proposed rule reduces federal protections, states and tribes still have authority to protect waters, and can fill the void in protecting these resources that the federal government is leaving behind.

Sabath said in some situations, it’s not a possibility because of not having the resources, “and there are examples occasionally of states that do their best to try to fill that gap. But much more often, we see the opposite, like in North Carolina.”

Savage clarified his point in noting that, just because the wetland is not considered protected by the Clean Water Act, it is still a wetland.

“Some people think if it’s not jurisdiction​al, then it’s not a wetland. No, it’s just not a jurisdictional wetland. It’s still a wetland. It meets the Army Corps of Engineers’ definition of a wetland, which is heavily based on science,” Savage said. “I think it’s important to make that distinction. We have jurisdictional wetlands that are protected, and the definition of jurisdictional wetlands is getting tighter and tighter and tighter, so that most of our wetlands are no longer jurisdictional, right? Therefore, they’re not protected, but they’re still wetlands, right? And that’s why we still have to be concerned about them.”

The EPA and Corps committed in a Dec. 22 press release to consider the public input received in developing a final rule.

The two federal branches that enforce the Clean Water Act last month pitched changes to the “waters of the United States” definition, which establishes the types of waterbodies that are federally protected against pollution, and if these amendments pass as written, conservation groups fear millions of acres of nontidal wetlands will be left vulnerable.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers have for decades had the authority to regulate “navigable waters,” which means “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas,” as written in the 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act. Expanded in the 1970s, the measure is typically referred to as the Clean Water Act.

The EPA explains on its website that the Clean Water Act “establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters.”

One thing the Clean Water Act doesn’t do is clearly define “waters of the United States.” The EPA calls it a “threshold term in the Clean Water Act and establishes the geographic scope of federal jurisdiction under the Act.”

EPA and Army leadership announced Nov. 17 plans to update the definition, which has been the subject of lawsuits and years’ worth of arguments.

The “Updated Definition of ‘’Waters of the United States’’’ was published Nov. 20 in the Federal Register, launching a 45-day comment period on the proposed changes that closes Jan. 5.  A virtual public meeting is scheduled for 12:30 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, with a 2-2:30 p.m. break. Attendees must register online to speak by 5 p.m. Monday. To listen only, register by the start of the meeting.

This latest attempt, which would exclude isolated wetlands, is directly linked to the Supreme Court’s May 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision. The Sacketts are an Idaho couple fined in the late 2000s for backfilling a section of their property that the EPA considered wetlands.

Judges ruled in the final opinion on the case that the “(Clean Water Act)’s use of ‘waters’” only refers to geographical features described in everyday language “as ‘streams, oceans, rivers and lakes’ and to adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.”

Earlier that year, the EPA had finalized a “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States'” rule that took effect March 20, 2023, and which the Sackett case invalidated. In August 2023, the EPA and Army Corps issued an amendment to align the rule with the Sackett decision.

That final conforming rule is what the EPA and Army Corps leadership are proposing to amend.

The agencies argue that the change “would fully implement” the Supreme Court’s ruling “by ensuring federal jurisdiction is focused on relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water—such as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes—and wetlands that are connected and indistinguishable from such waterbodies.”

With this proposed rule, the agencies explain in the docket, they “intend to provide greater regulatory certainty and increase Clean Water Act program predictability and consistency by clarifying the definition of ‘waters of the United States.’ This proposed rule is also intended to implement the overall objective of the Clean Water Act to restore and maintain the quality of the Nation’s waters while respecting State and Tribal authority over their own land and water resources.”

Environmental groups argued then, when the Sackett case was ruled, and still maintain that by removing protections from the millions of acres of nontidal wetlands, there will be consequences: Water quality will be jeopardized and flooding will increase, to name just two.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath said in an interview that for 50 years, the Clean Water Act has been the strongest and best federal protection for many of the waters and wetlands around the country.

The law does that “by saying you can’t pollute, you can’t fill, you can’t destroy certain features, certain waters, without a permit,” Sabath said, and the permitting process means that there are certain protections and controls you have to apply to minimize the amount of destruction.

Sabath added that a number of features of the Clean Water Act are dependent on the type of water, and, in addressing its critics, not every puddle in the country covered by the act.

“It’s only things that meet the definition of waters of the United States, and that isn’t defined in the statute itself,” Sabath continued. “Congress didn’t define it, so EPA and the Army Corps, in a series of rules over the years, have tried to define exactly what wetlands are and aren’t covered by the Clean Water Act.”

This proposed rule is the latest revision and it is “by far the most narrow, the most extreme definition,” Sabath continued. “It includes the fewest number of streams and wetlands and other waters of any interpretation of ‘waters the United States’ that we’ve seen.”

North Carolina Wildlife Federation Conservation Policy Vice President Manley Fuller told Coastal Review that with this proposed rule, the bottom line is a massive loss of protection of waters of the United States, which are vital habitats for fish and wildlife.

“This will also negatively affect hunting and fishing, which are a significant part of our natural resource-based economy,” he continued. “Wetlands are also buffers for the built environment and help reduce downstream flooding. Protecting clean waters and wetlands is extremely popular with the public for many reasons and we need to strengthen rather than weaken these programs.”

North Carolina Sierra Club Deputy Director Erin Carey told Coastal Review the rule will effectively remove federal protections from at least 80% of wetlands and over 5 million miles of streams across the country.

“This rule will open millions of acres of wetlands to the threat of development, leaving communities already vulnerable to flooding without the frontline protection afforded by these invaluable habitats. Wetlands act as filters for floodwaters and other runoff, making them critical not only to flood mitigation, but to the preservation of clean water resources,” Carey said.

Environmental Defense Fund Coasts and Watersheds Science Senior Manager Dr. Adam Gold pointed out as well that if the proposed rule is implemented as written, nearly all nontidal wetlands and intermittent streams could be without Clean Water Act protections in North Carolina and across the United States.

While there are many changes in the proposed rule, the most notable are to the definitions of “relative permanence” of waters and a “continuous surface connection” for wetlands, Gold said, adding that the proposed language introduces the concept of a “wet season.”

“Under the proposed rule, wetlands and waters would only receive Clean Water Act protections if they have surface water throughout the ‘wet season,’ described in the rule as ‘an extended period where there is continuous surface hydrology resulting from predictable seasonal precipitation patterns year after year,’” Gold said. “This proposed rule would make it easier to drain or develop wetlands that do not meet the ‘wet season’ surface water requirement, putting our wetlands and the benefits they provide at serious risk.”

In North Carolina, the impact of the proposed rule is 3.2 million acres, or about 88%, of nontidal wetlands estimated to be without Clean Water Act protections. “Importantly, this analysis relies on wetland ‘wetness’ during the growing season, but the proposed rule uses the ‘wet season,’” Gold said.

About the wet season, Gold continued, there are “fundamental issues with the proposed rule’s ‘wet season’ dataset.”

He said the classification of the “wet season” comes from the Army Corps of Engineers Antecedent Precipitation Tool, but the underlying data this tool relies on is modeled using the average monthly temperature and precipitation between 1950 and 1999. The modeled dataset was published in 2001 and does not use the best-available methods.

“The agencies proposed ‘wet season’ dataset classifies most of the year, and in some cases the entire year, as ‘wet’ for much of coastal North Carolina. So, under this proposed rule, wetlands or streams in Jacksonville would need to have surface water year-round (the whole year is classified as ‘wet’) to have Clean Water Act protections. For New Bern, the ‘wet season’ is 11 months, and for Wilmington or Brunswick County, the ‘wet season’ is 10 months.”

Gold said the proposed rule “which could essentially remove nontidal wetland and intermittent waters from the Clean Water Act, does not align with the goal of the Clean Water Act to ‘restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.’ Science shows us that all wetlands, regardless of how ‘wet’ they are, clean our water, provide critical wildlife habitat, and reduce downstream flooding impacts.”

The EPA and Corps also asserted the week the proposed changes were announced that the new rules would provide “the regulatory certainty needed to support our nation’s farmers who feed and fuel the world and advance EPA’s Powering the Great American Comeback initiative.”

Sabath noted that the idea that this will have huge benefits for farming and for farmers is a common refrain when they’re restricting the protections of the Clean Water Act, “but the Clean Water Act actually exempts most farming activities from coverage already, so you don’t need to get a permit for doing regular farming activities, even when they would affect a wetland or stream that would otherwise be covered.”

The idea that this is a huge benefit for farmers is a nicer story, “because they don’t want to say, well, this is a huge benefit for large industrial facilities, industrial polluters, developers,” Sabath said.

Carey sees the proposed rule as demonstrating “that the EPA has abdicated its mandated responsibility to protect the environment and the people who depend on it. Even worse, the agency appears eager to sacrifice our natural resources on the altar of corporate greed.”

The public should be “very concerned that the federal agency tasked with ensuring clean water, clean air, and the protection of our natural environment seems determined to undermine that responsibility. With this proposed change, the EPA claims to seek clarity in regulation, but this rule would serve only to allow industry to profit from environmental destruction, and the ruination of our natural resources,” she added.

White Oak Waterkeeper Riley Lewis said in a statement that the EPA’s new definition of Waters of the United States ignores decades of scientific understanding and generations of Indigenous knowledge.

“By redefining wetlands using ambiguous criteria seemingly designed to maximize developable land and reduce regulatory barriers, the agency is turning a blind eye to the very real, very predictable impacts on our communities,” Lewis said. “Water will continue to move beneath our feet through groundwater and across the landscape during storms, regardless of a federal definition or a construction permit. This rule sets Americans up for flooding, damaged infrastructure, and increased pollution in the waters we rely on for our drinking supply, our food, and our way of life.”

So, why does this actually matter to the public? Sabath said it does in a few ways.

In North Carolina, people who hunt, fish and paddle use wetlands directly and those might be impacted by being destroyed or polluted without a permit.

“Anyone who is in a community that floods during extreme weather, and we all know that that’s happening more and more now, or that’s at risk of flooding,” Sabath said. By losing those wetlands, you lose their ability to protect communities from flooding, and that comes more often now from extreme weather.

“It’s a double whammy. You’re losing the benefits that they provide, and you’re probably creating more problems,” and more potential pollution or channels of pollution at the same time by replacing wetlands, natural areas with pavement or developed areas, he said.

With wetlands being a “good natural sponge” that can absorb huge amounts of water, “if anything, we should be trying to expand wetland coverage rather than take it away, Sabath said.

“In short,” Carey with the Sierra Club continued, “communities will watch rivers and streams in their communities fall victim to unchecked pollution. Without federal protections, industry will discharge and develop at will, destroying habitats, water quality, and flood protection measures as they go. The wetlands and streams of this country belong to all people, not just those who seek to exploit them.”

Updated at 8 a.m. Thursday to include the link to the Federal Register, which published the proposed rules Thursday after the story posted, and public comment information.

The two federal agencies with jurisdiction over navigable waterways have published amendments to the existing “waters of the United States” rule that they say will “establish a clear, durable, common-sense definition” of the term, and a public comment period has opened.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army’s changes have heightened worry among conservation groups that federal protections for isolated wetlands might be weakened further than they were soon after the 2023 Supreme Court decision that found wetlands must be connected by surface water to a navigable body of water to fall under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers said in a release Monday that the newly proposed changes were to “fully implement the court’s direction by focusing on relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water—such as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes—and wetlands that are connected and indistinguishable from such waterbodies.”

As part of the announcement, leadership posted the prepublication notice they planned to submit to the Federal Register, which was published Thursday, starting a 45-day public comment period.

Comments must be submitted by Jan. 5, 2026, and identified by Docket ID No. EPA–HQ– OW–2025–0322, through www.regulations.gov, by email to OW-Docket@epa.gov, or mail to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Water Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460.

Language in the Clean Water Act states that the “term ‘navigable waters’ means the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” However, the act doesn’t define what “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, actually are, leaving the EPA and Corps to determine the geographic scope of the rule.

Over the last five decades, pushback and litigation have forced the two agencies to revise the definition several times.

The current regulatory definition, according to the EPA, was put in place in September 2023 to align with the May 2023 Supreme Court ruling on the Sackett v EPA lawsuit.

The Sacketts filed the lawsuit after the agency ordered the Idaho couple to restore where they had begun backfilling with dirt the section of their property that the EPA considered to be wetlands of a nearby navigable waterbody. The judges sided with the Sacketts that federally protected wetlands must have an obvious connection to waterbodies like streams, oceans, rivers and lakes.

To conform to the Sackett decision, the EPA and Army amended in September 2023 the latest final rule, which had been put in place that January.

EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle shared with Washington, D.C., lawmakers Monday afternoon an overview of the proposed rules.

“I know that across the country, news of today’s proposal is going to be met with a lot of relief and happiness from farmers, ranchers, other landowners, governments that have been looking for a simple, prescriptive definition that the whole country can operate off of, and would allow individuals to know whether or not there’s a ‘water of the United States’ without having to go hire an attorney or a consultant, having to pay someone to Tell them,” Zeldin said Monday during the announcement livestreamed on the EPA’s YouTube.

The EPA secretary explained that the proposal “includes practical, common-sense revisions that will make a real difference,” and adds definitions for what he called “key terms” such as “’relatively permanent,’ ‘continuous surface connection’ and ‘tributary’ to appropriately limit the scope of what is consistent with” the Sackett case.

“We’re establishing that jurisdictional tributaries must connect to traditional navigable waters, either directly or through other features that provide predictable and consistent flow. We’re adding a new exclusion for groundwater and revising exclusions for certain ditches prior converted cropland and waste treatment systems,” Zeldin continued. “We’re incorporating locally familiar terminology such as wet season to help determine whether a water body qualifies as WOTUS. And we’re strengthening state and tribal decision-making authority by providing clear regulatory guidelines while recognizing their expertise in local land and water resources.”

He explained that the proposed rules were developed based on input from multiple sources, including preproposal recommendations, docket information from nine public listening sessions and consultation comments from states, tribes and local governments.

Telle addressed the audience after Zeldin.

“Since 1972 Americans have struggled to understand what Congress meant when it included the term ‘waters of the United States’ in the Clean Water Act. Did it apply to them? Did it not? The definition of that term has been often abused, sometimes stretched beyond recognition over time, and it’s left Americans uncertain about whether they were complying with the Clean Water Act or not,” he said Monday, adding that “under President Trump’s leadership, the EPA and army Civil Works, which oversees the Corps of Engineers, are kicking off the formal process that will give American certainty about their property once and for all.”

Several Republican officials thanked Zeldin from the podium for initiating the proposed amendments including West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey who said that “for too long there’s been great deal of uncertainty” about the WOTUS rule.

“Unfortunately, it left many people holding the bag. Farmers, contractors, small business owners guessing whether their ephemeral stream or a backyard ditch was going to be classified as a waters of the United States rule and potentially subject them to significant penalties,” he continued.

Alabama Congressman Gary Palmer said he was confident that the rule will prioritize clean water while protecting farmers, ranchers, landowners and businesses alike.

Conservation groups have been vocal about these revisions opening up isolated wetlands to development and degradation since the announcement was made.

“Wetlands are the lifeblood of our coast, and should be held to the highest standards of protection,” North Carolina Coastal Federation Coastal Advocate Kerri Allen explained. “The wetlands most impacted by these proposed rollbacks are the very wetlands that hold water during storms and help protect downstream waters. With the proposed changes, our coast will face irrevocable damage that impacts not only our wildlife and fisheries, but also our coastal economy and communities.” The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath said Monday in a statement that this proposed rule, if adopted, “could have catastrophic ramifications for communities already plagued by flooding, water quality concerns, and drinking water shortages. After critical, longstanding protections for clean water and wetlands were drastically narrowed by the Sackett decision, we need stronger protections, not weaker, to safeguard our communities and environment.”

League of Conservation Voters Healthy Communities Program Director Madeleine Foote had a similar reaction.

“The Trump administration’s Polluted Water Rule is another blatant giveaway to big corporate polluters that will jeopardize the waters that our families and communities rely on for drinking, recreation, and fueling our local economies,” Foote said.

“In 2023, the Supreme Court’s devastating Sackett decision stripped federal protections from millions of miles of streams and tens of millions of acres of wetlands, and now corporate polluters are pushing their friends in the administration to go even further in decimating our clean water safeguards. They won’t be happy until the Clean Water Act is nothing more than words on a page and they can pollute our waters with abandon,” Foote continued.

Environmental Defense Fund Associate Vice President Will McDow stated Monday that the new proposed WOTUS rule from the Trump administration that will redefine which wetlands and waters have Clean Water Act Protections. 

“We already spend billions annually responding to disasters that were created by building in risky areas. With today’s proposed WOTUS rule, commercial developers will be allowed to pave over wetlands to build unsafe housing that either floods or increases flooding to neighbors,” he continued. “This rule brings tremendous uncertainty and risk to our nation’s drinking water, flood protections and critical habitats. Based on our peer-reviewed analysis, new requirements for wetland protections could leave nearly all wetlands without Clean Water Act protections. Requirements in the new rule are not based in science, difficult to implement in practice and will create a dangerous lack of clarity.” 

Acres of wetland habitat undergoing restoration need a few days to dry out after a rain-soaked weekend before volunteers can get to work planting at Carolina Beach State Park.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation has rescheduled a volunteer planting originally planned for Monday to 10 a.m. to noon Thursday.

Volunteers may register to help plant native vegetation within the 10-acre project area, which was selected by federal and state agencies to address environmental damages caused by decades of creosote contamination that occurred during operations at a former wood treatment plant in Navassa.

The former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. site in the Brunswick County town, which is a little more than 30 miles upstream of Carolina Beach, was listed on the federal Superfund’s National Priorities List in 2010.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and project contractor designed the native tidal wetland restoration project to include removing invasive species, creating a slough through the removal of fill material and grading, planting native vegetation, and monitoring the project once it is complete.

Rainfall from a system that began over the weekend and continues to sweep up the East Coast have flooded the trail and wetland area.

“That said, this flooding is actually a great reminder that the wetland is doing exactly what it was designed to do – absorbing, filtering, and holding stormwater to reduce flooding elsewhere and improve water quality,” according to the Coastal Federation. “Wetlands act like nature’s sponges, capturing runoff and allowing sediment and nutrients to settle before the water slowly filters back into our coastal systems.”

Volunteers are recommended to bring tall boots or waders and gloves. These items will also be provided on site to volunteers who may not have them. It is recommended that volunteers dress in layers they do not mind getting dirty.

A development company proposing to build a neighborhood on land in New Hanover County that includes a forest of centuries-old trees will “continue to fight” to see its plans through, the company’s founder said.

Copper Builders founder Wade Miller earlier this week called out what he referred to as misconceptions about Hilton Bluffs, a neighborhood proposed within a 4,000-acre tract that includes a nationally threatened forest.

In front of a crowd of opponents of the proposed development, Miller stressed at a New Hanover County Board of Commissioners meeting that trees in Sledge Forest would not be cut, wetlands would not be developed, 1,000 acres would be reserved as open space, and he reiterated a desire to conserve more than 1,100 acres on the tract.

“This means over 60% of the property will be protected if we achieve this goal,” he said. “We know this path comes with tradeoffs. We lose some density. We lose our golf course. We will lose one home per acre conserved. This is our preferred plan. This is what we are trying to do. We’ve invested considerable time, resources and energy into all this and we will continue to fight for it.”

Miller, as well as several people opposed to the development proposed for Castle Hayne, addressed commissioners during the board’s public comment session Monday afternoon.

Prior to the meeting, nearly 150 people gathered outside of the county’s historic courthouse in downtown Wilmington for a Save Sledge Forest rally.

The board meeting came on the heels of an announcement late last week that the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources had rejected a nonprofit’s multimillion-dollar grant request to purchase hundreds of acres of wetlands in Sledge Forest.

Unique Places to Save, in partnership with the Charlotte-based development company, had applied for a $15 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant to purchase 1,160 acres.

Opponents of the proposed neighborhood argue that the entire tract should be spared from development.

Sledge Forest rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River in northern New Hanover County and is part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

More than 20 years ago, the Natural Heritage Program of North Carolina identified the forest as a significant natural area, one that includes bald cypress trees up to 500 years old, longleaf and loblolly pines older than 300 years and some of the Southeast’s largest remaining Atlantic white cedar.

The forest was added to the Old-Growth Forest Network’s national list of threatened forests earlier this year.

“With abundant wetlands and rising waters, the entirety of this site, not just a portion, must be preserved to maintain the site as a nationally significant heritage area,” geologist Roger Shew said during the commissioner’s meeting.

Shew, a senior lecturer in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Ocean Sciences and Environmental Sciences department and a conservationist, warned that developing the upland area of the tract would impact adjacent wetlands with stormwater runoff “or subsurface flow that may exacerbate flooding and contaminant movement.”

“We already know that contaminants have moved off the GE site into the wetlands,” he said. “In fact, Copper Builders is petitioning to have a small brownfield site designated there.”

The tract being eyed for development is adjacent to a state-designated inactive hazardous site contaminated from drums of calcium fluoride and lubricants that were stored in unlined trenches during the 1960 and 1970s.

That contamination spread across two parcels, including one owned by General Electric, and the other owned by Nuclear Fuel Holding Co. Inc., a GE affiliate.

Miller did not address concerns raised about contamination. He did, however, point out that development would occur in areas that are farmed regularly for timber.

The current owners of the property have the right to clear cut all of the land, he said.

“We don’t want that to happen,” Miller said. “We want to save Sledge Forest through honest conversation efforts, not through an ask for legal or regulation changes. I’m an outdoorsman. I want to protect it. I care deeply about it.”

A petition of more than 13,000 signatures of those fighting the proposed development was presented to commissioners.

Because the proposed development is on land that does not have to be rezoned, the project does not require approval from a public body, effectively omitting the opportunity for public comment.

“It’s been a year since we learned about that project, since we learned that a developer had found a loophole in our ordinance that would allow him to build perhaps the largest residential project in the history of New Hanover County, while also allowing him to block any input or review by you, our elected officials, or by us, the community that will be impacted,” Castle Hayne resident and Director of Save Sledge Forest Kayne Darrel said Monday. “Due to this loophole, we were told by that developer that this massive project was a by-right development that gave us no voice in the decisions. Our ask is that you make a decision to join us in being part of the solution because we believe, and we want you to believe, that together we can fix this mistake and we can save Sledge Forest.”

Saturday evening was one of celebrating coastal stewards, supporters and volunteers during North Carolina Coastal Federation’s annual Pelican Awards and Taste of the Coast fundraising event.

The nonprofit organization that publishes Coastal Review was established in 1982 with the mission to protect and preserve the state’s coast and has offices on the Outer Banks, the central coast and Cape Fear region.

Held in Carteret Community College’s Joslyn Hall, the staff presented 15 Pelican Awards to those who have shared “their time and talents, through leadership, education, hands-on projects, and volunteer efforts, to inspire others and create lasting change,” according to the organization.

The Taste of the Coast fundraising celebration followed the ceremony next door in the Crystal Coast Civic Center, where there was food, live music and a silent auction.

This is the 22nd year that the organization has recognized “exceptional contributions” with Pelican Awards.

Federation Board of Directors Vice President Kenneth Chestnut told the roughly 200 in the audience that the Pelican Awards annually “recognize and celebrate the organizations, agencies, partners and the extraordinary people who work together for a healthy coast.”

He continued that the awards are “about partnerships and coming together for a common cause, and that’s the protection and restoration of our beautiful coast.”

Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis presented one of the two Lifetime Achievement Awards this year to Dr. Hans Paerl, “For a Distinguished Career Dedicated to Coastal Research, Protection, and Restoration.”

Paerl, who recently retired after 47 years, is a Kenan Professor of Marine Environmental Sciences at University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City.

“Paerl has spent decades uncovering the secret of healthy waterways and applying that knowledge to protect the coast,” Davis said.

Paerl’s accomplishments include establishing the FerryMon program, where he turned state ferries into long-term water quality monitoring stations for the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds.

“His groundbreaking research has shown how nutrients and climate affect water quality, how harmful algal blooms form, and most importantly, what we can do to safeguard our estuaries and coastal waters for future generations,” Davis said of Paerl, whose work has appeared in 600 scientific publications. His many honors include the 2003 G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award for work in oceanography, the 2011 Odom Award in estuarine science, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Harmful Algal Bloom committee.

Paerl took the podium with ease and explained to the crowd that he was thrilled to be able to talk about the scientific achievements made in the state to help protect its waters, particularly going way back to the phosphate detergent ban enacted in the 1980s, and the establishment of a total maximum daily nitrogen load for the Neuse River, “which has been effective, and I’m glad to say that we’re seeing some really good results from that now.”

But, Paerl continued, “more importantly, I think I’d like to share this award with all the students, technicians, faculty and collaborators that have worked with me.” He called himself “more of a facilitator” who knocks on doors in the legislature to point “out that good science brings good management and good decisions.”

Though he’s retired, Paerl said he is indebted to those he has worked with and hasn’t stopped knocking on doors and talking to folks and collaborating.

“I’m still showing up at work, and we’re all dedicated — I’m really speaking for all the folks that I’ve worked with — we’re all dedicated, from the science perspective,” Paerl said, to make North Carolina an example for other states, the country and the world, “in terms of using science to really make a difference, in terms of protecting our environment, saving it and making sure it’s sustainable for the long run.”

Federation Coastal Management Program Director Kerri Allen of the Wrightsville Beach office presented to David Cignotti a Lifetime Achievement Award “For Outstanding Community Leadership, Collaboration, and Dedication to Coastal Stewardship.”

Cignotti is someone “who embodies the heart and soul of this community,” Allen said, and “is one of those rare people who leads a quiet strength, deep humility and a genuine love for nature that you can feel in everything he does.”

A lifelong educator, former mayor of Wrightsville Beach and dedicated steward of the Coastal Federation, he helped launch a membership drive that brought in more than 60 new families, has been a site coordinator with an international coastal cleanup effort for at least a decade, and is a cofounder of Save Our Seas NC. Cignotti also served on the Coastal Federation’s southeast advisory committee, its board of directors, and he chaired the audit committee.

“When the coast needs a voice, he speaks up,” Allen said, whether that’s bringing attention to the use of bird poison on Wrightsville Beach, protecting trees from unnecessary clearcutting, or making sure local businesses have a say in offshore drilling proposals.

Cignotti expressed his gratitude, adding that he couldn’t think of another organization with more than 40 years of advocacy for the coastal environment, and “cannot imagine getting an award that I would cherish more than what I’m getting tonight.”

He continued that one of his favorite quotes is from Jacques Cousteau, “that people protect what they love. And I think that pretty much sums up what we’re doing here tonight. Everybody that came tonight loves North Carolina’s coast and is here to support the coastal Federation’s mission.”

Northeast region awards

Alyson Flynn, coastal advocate at the Coastal Federation’s Wanchese office, presented three awards for the Outer Banks area.

“All three of our recipients in the Northeast embody the spirit of the Pelican Award in their own unique way, from on the ground restoration work to grassroots volunteerism, to forward thinking leadership that shapes the future of our coast,” Flynn said.

Volunteer Donnie Sellers was recognized “For Exceptional Contributions and Stewardship of Our Coast.”

Sellers said he appreciates what the Coastal Federation does and all the hard work of the staff, which he says he sees firsthand at the northeast office, “but mostly I’m grateful for how generous and kind they are, because that’s — It’s probably not what I should say — but that’s really what keeps me coming back.”

Volunteer Leonard “Len” Schmitz was awarded “For Outstanding Volunteer Efforts to Advance Oyster Shell Recycling.”

Schmitz told the audience he wanted to share the award with his fellow recyclers on the Outer Banks, adding “we couldn’t do this without the help of the restaurants.”

National Park Service’s Outer Banks Group Superintendent David Hallac was honored “For Leadership and Dedication to Coastal Protection, Recreation and Cultural Resources.”

The group includes Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Wright Brothers National Memorial and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

Flynn explained that Hallac had since 2015 managed one of the most iconic and dynamic barrier island systems in our nation and faces regular challenges, such as rising seas, chronic erosion, collapsing homes, petroleum contamination and increasing fragility of N.C. 12, the state highway, all while welcoming over 3 million visitors each year.

“From 1985 until 1999 I came from a small town right outside of New York City to the Outer Banks,” Hallac said as he accepted his award.

“I spent the entire year dreaming about coming to the beach there. I had no idea I would end up managing the three lighthouses there and 80 miles of beaches and 200 miles of incredible coastal marshes, it’s been just absolutely amazing,” Hallac continued. “It’s a little bit ironic at the same time that all of the things that shape these beautiful places, sometimes it appears we’re fighting against it. And so it’s my goal. It’s our goal, to find ways to change, to adapt to the things that are shaping our coastline, to be able to coexist in these places and also to preserve them for future generations.”

Central Coast awards

The nonprofit Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail received a Pelican Award “For Dedicated Partnership to Protect and Restore Coastal Water Quality and Habitats.”

Water Quality Program Director Bree Charron, based in Carteret County, explained that the Friends group has, over the past five years, worked to secure and help purchase 787 acres to create an 11-mile-long trail through the North River Wetlands Preserve in Carteret County. The Friends supports the trail that connects Jockey’s Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains.

Ben Jones, a project manager with the Friends group, said its members were excited to help restore and showcase the preserve.

“There’s lots of land we still need for the trail anyway,” he said, “and I hope this is just the beginning, too, because it’s really important for us to provide access for people to these special places that we’re protecting.”

Jessica Guilianelli with Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point was recognized “For Supporting, Promoting, and Advancing the Use of Living Shorelines.”

April Hall is with the salt marsh program and said when she joined the Coastal Federation staff a few years ago she took over a living shoreline project along the Neuse River at Cherry Point.

“At the time, the Federation had secured funding to support construction of roughly 2,000 feet of a much larger 12,000-foot living shoreline project led by Jessica Guilianelli,” Hall said. “And in case anyone is trying to do the math, 12,000 feet is about 2.3 miles. So to say this was an ambitious project would be an understatement.”

The site had experienced severe shoreline erosion, losing more than 100 feet in some areas since 1994, and worsened by Hurricane Florence in 2018.

Under Guilianelli’s management, air station brass committed to a hybrid solution to repair critical bulkheads while incorporating living shorelines and native marsh plants to reduce wave energy and restore natural shoreline functions.

“I’m in a really, really interesting position as natural resources manager for the Marine Corps,” Guilianelli said, adding it’s a balance that challenges her daily. “It’s such a cool thing to be able to balance our military mission with conservation, and I’m grateful to be in that role.”

Lauren Johnson and Tamarr Moore, who recently earned their master’s degrees from N.C. Central University, were recognized “For Partnership and Inspiration to Advance the Next Generation of Coastal Professionals.”

Coastal Educator Rachel Bisesi of the Coastal Federation’s Newport office noted that the two women are the first graduates of a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration program under their adviser, Dr. Caressa Gerald. The NOAA program supports students of color in environmental sciences.

“Lauren and Tamar have shown remarkable courage and resilience entering scientific spaces where representation is still far too limited. They broke barriers and paved the way for students of color to pursue coastal research. Their work has inspired others and opened the door for the next generation of environmental professionals and I can’t wait to see where their journey leads them, Bisesi said.

The graduates both thanked their parents and adviser, Gerald, who Moore said “opened a lot of doors for me and put me in many rooms that I would not have otherwise been in.” Johnson added that she was “very grateful to be in this room right now, along with other professionals” with the same drive and motivation.

Southeast region awards

Photographer Alan Cradick was honored “For Outstanding Volunteer Service to Our Coast.”

Coastal Education Coordinator Bonnie Mitchell explained that Cradick has been behind the camera “quietly and generously donating his time, energy and professional photography skills to help us tell the story of our work.”

Cradick, in accepting his award, said that it’s a privilege to be recognized, but that’s not why he volunteers. “I do it because I just love photography. I love the coast. I love working with professionals and professional volunteers who do so much wonderful things for the coast and for advancing the health of the of the ecosystems.”

Feletia Lee and Anna Reh-Gingerich were honored “For Dedicated Partnership and Commitment to Advance Watershed Restoration.”

Reh-Gingerich, watershed coordinator of Wilmington’s Heal Our Waterways Program, and Lee, chief sustainability officer at University of North Carolina Wilmington, have been working with the Coastal Federation on stormwater pollution in the Bradley and Hewlett creeks watershed.

Over the years, the project has resulted in rain gardens being installed and the use of permeable materials that absorb rain to retrofit parking lot drainage systems. The sites also serve as living classrooms, Coastal Federation Special Projects Manager Lauren Kolodij explained.

Reh-Gingerich said that she and Lee were honored to be recognized and thanked the Coastal Federation for supporting the effort. “This work is really easy to do when you have great partners to do them with.”

Paddling organization We the Water was honored for “For Excellence in Community Education and Inspiration for Coastal Protection and Restoration.”

The Wrightsville Beach Outrigger Canoe Club’s members paddled the state’s entire coast to advocate for clean water. The team paddled more than 340 miles along the coast over the course of three summers to raise awareness about the importance of clean water and raised more than $50,000 for the Coastal Federation, Kolodij said.

The Coastal Federation’s Kerri Allen, who is part of the outrigger club, accepted the award on behalf of the entire team.

“Every stroke counts, and when you get it right, you move as one, as a single force gliding through the waves,” Allen said, adding that “it’s a perfect metaphor for protecting our coast, we’re all on the same boat. Literally and figuratively, the threats and challenges we face are considerable, but we go farther and stronger when we move as one.”

Statewide awards

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries Habitat Enhancement Section was recognized “For Dedicated Service and Collaboration for Oyster Habitat Creation.”

Marine Debris Program Director Ted Wilgis of the Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office, said that the division’s habitat enhancement section had since 1996 built almost 800 acres of oyster sanctuary and a cultch-planting program, where oysters can be harvested.

Jason Peters, program supervisor for restoration work, said he and Enhancement Section Chief Zach Harrison were accepting the award on behalf of all of the dedicated and hardworking state employees who are involved.

“We’ve got a crew of vessel operators, equipment operators, divers, field biologists, supervisors all play an integral role in this work. And we’re just, we’re very fortunate to have such great staff,” Peters said.

Harrison added that he and his team were “honored and humbled to be just a small cog in such a big machine driving the North Carolina coast forward and environmentalism in the U.S. forward.”

Worth Creech of the firm Native Shorelines was honored for “For Advancing Community Oyster Shell Recycling and Coastal Restoration”

Coastal Resiliency Manager Sarah Bodin said Creech “has been an absolute transformative force in the world of oyster shell recycling and coastal restoration through tireless dedication, community engagement and innovative thinking.”

He did this by building public awareness, and relationships with restaurants, volunteers and restoration professionals. “His efforts have directly contributed to restoring oyster habitats, enhancing biodiversity and protecting shorelines from erosion,” Bodin said.

Creech told the crowd that you never know what you’ll get a passion for in life, and “you certainly don’t know whether it’s going to be something as stinky as oyster shells, but it happened to me with Native Shorelines,” adding he’s always “inspired by those who did this hard work before me.”

The Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership was recognized “For Cultivating Coastal Collaboration and Empowering Educators”

Bisesi said the program empowers “educators to lead in both the classroom and the community, and provide immersive experiences and professional development by equipping teachers to with the tools they need to inspire the next generation.”

Associate Director Mark Townley told the audience that since connecting eight years ago with the organization, “I can honestly say that the Coastal Federation is an exemplar of what a partnership should and can look like to really make a huge impact with K-through-12 public school education in the state of North Carolina.”

Attorney John Harris was recognized “For Outstanding Business and Community Collaboration to Advance Coastal Stewardship”

Coastal Federation founder and Senior Adviser to the Executive Director Todd Miller, said that Harris began working with the organization in 1997 on the Hoop Pole Creek project in Atlantic Beach. Harris is a partner in the Wyatt, Early, Harris, Wheeler firm’s Morehead City office.

“John’s legal work made it possible for the Coastal Federation to buy out a condominium and marina development and permanently protect 30 acres of rare maritime forests,” Miller said, adding that it was the first property ever purchased in the state using the North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund.

“Since then, John has finally helped us conserve nearly 15,000 acres of coastal lands, forests, marshes, creeks, all protected because he made sure every deal was done right,” Miller added.

Harris told the crowd that he was “honored to be able to preserve clean water in our wetlands and to help them purchase land for our grandchildren and generations to come to enjoy what we have Here at the coast.”

The Environmental Management Commission voted unanimously Thursday to send a rule outlining health-based standards for three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances to the state Rules Review Commission.

The 15-member commission also wrapped up the rulemaking process to “clarify” the definition of wetlands, as directed by a summer 2023 session law. The draft language now heads to the Office of Administrative Hearings. Per the session law, the rule is exempt from the Rules Review Commission.

During the environmental commission’s meeting held in Raleigh and streamed virtually, members voted on the draft rule that specifically targets PFOA, PFOS, and GenX in groundwater, which supports about half of drinking water in North Carolina.

Under the rule that is now expected to go before the rules commission at its Oct. 30 meeting, permitted releases of PFAS to groundwater will be limited. The rule also establishes goals for cleaning contamination in groundwater and ensures residents whose drinking water exceeds contamination limits receive alternative water supplies.

Comments the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality received on the rule through a public comment period late last year overwhelmingly supported the rule, but, as Commissioner Dr. Jackie MacDonald Gibson noted Thursday, the public also raised concerns that the rule did not set standards for additional PFAS.

“It’s a very emotional issue,” Gibson said. “I went to the (public) hearing in Wilmington and people there, their families have been directly affected by PFAS exposure to the point that some people were afraid to have their kids drink water at school. I think a lot of people are going to be glad that we’re moving forward with this. They’re going to wish we were doing more.”

The environmental commission’s groundwater and waste management committee last year voted to omit five of the eight compounds DEQ staff originally presented to be included in the rule.

The committee chose to focus on PFOS and PFOA, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies as likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to Chemours.

Commissioner Tim Baumgartner, who chairs the groundwater and waste management committee, explained that the compounds that were omitted – PFBS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFBA and PFHxA – are being regulated at the practical quantitation limit, or PQL.

PQL is considered the base line in testing laboratories.

“It’s not that we’re not regulating PFAS. It is a matter of what the quantitative limit is for remediation, or what the target level is,” he said.

Commissioner Robin Smith said she regretted that the commission did not adopt health-based standards for all eight PFAS as initially presented by DEQ.

“It would have actually helped some land owners and some responsible parties who need to clean up groundwater by providing them with a health-based standard that is above the PQL,” Smith said. “I’m going to vote for these. I think this is a good rule, but to me, I can’t follow the reasoning of dropping the other five when, in fact those would have made the rules less stringent, but still would have maintained a health-based standard for those other five.”

Environmental Commission Chair JD Solomon responded, saying that instead of using a health-based equation, one that is subject to change, for the compounds that were omitted, the commission “defaulted to PQL.”

“Keep as much PFAS out of the water as possible,” he said. “So, while PFAS is being debated at the national level, and whatever level, we decided as a body to keep it as stringent as possible, even for cleanups.”

If approved by the rules commission next month, the rule would become effective Nov. 1.

A proposed draft rule requiring monitoring and development of PFAS minimization initiatives for dischargers into surface water will be on the commission’s water quality committee’s agenda in November.

Members of that committee voted 4-2 Wednesday to include the draft rule on their meeting scheduled Nov. 12. The proposed rule would require industries that directly discharge compounds into surface water and all significant industrial users that discharge to publicly owned treatment works to monitor their releases of PFOA, PFOS and GenX.

If the committee approves the rule, it will go to the full commission for consideration Nov. 13.

During staff comments, the commissioners were informed that DEQ is now requiring Chemours to expand the number of private wells eligible for PFAS contamination sampling to about 14,000 additional residences in New Hanover, Brunswick, Columbus and Pender counties.

Related: DEQ requires Chemours to expand PFAS well water testing

The expanded area was identified through additional data analysis conducted by the state and Chemours. Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County discharged PFAS, including GenX, for decades directly into the Cape Fear River, ground and air.

Wetlands definition rule

The General Assembly with a June 27, 2023, session law directed the commission to adopt a rule consistent with language in the statute that read “Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by” federal regulations.

Sue Homewood with the Division of Water Resources explained Thursday to the commission that, “We had the session law in 2023, the EMC requested that we move forward with this rule amendment, even though we were implementing the rule and are implementing the session law already.”

Around the same time this session law was drafted and making its way through the state legislature, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of an Idaho couple, the Sacketts, who sued the Environmental Protection Agency for putting a stop on work to backfill what the federal agency argued was wetlands.

The Sackett v. EPA decision on May 25, 2023, changed the definition of “waters of the United States,” which are navigable waters protected under the Clean Water Act. The definition now excludes noncontiguous wetlands, or those not connected to navigable waters. The EPA aligned its definition with the court case effective Sept. 8, 2023.

When the North Carolina General Assembly put the 2023 session law through that summer, commissioners worked with staff on how best to proceed. The matter was on pause between April 2024 to January of this year, when the water quality committee approved the language to go to the full commission. Members approved in March the proposed text rule and moving ahead to public comment, which was open April 15 to June 30. A public hearing was held June 26.

Homewood said 134 written comments were submitted and 13 oral comments were presented at the hearing, which are in summarized in the hearing officer’s report.

Of all the comments, she continued, only one was in favor of the rule amendment.

“In general, the comments opposed to the rule amendment were concerned about loss of wetland protection in North Carolina,” Homewood said, such as what the rule means for flooding, resiliency and wildlife habitat.

The public also commented that the state is investing in mitigation and flood resiliency that these wetlands could help provide, and there were some comments stating that the General Assembly should not dictate a rule making body on how to implement rules.

The wetlands definition rule was approved with 10 voting for the rule and commissioners Smith, Gibson, Dr. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, Dr. Ann Chelminski and Dr. Ilona Jaspers voting against. In a separate vote, the hearing officer’s report passed 13-1, with Orme-Zavaleta voting against no and Gibson abstaining.

Homewood said the next step is to submit the rule to the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings, then to General Assembly, which would be the 2026 session. After that, it needs to be approved by the EPA, because this definition is part of the state’s water quality standards.

Karen Higgins with the water planning section said that the EPA has 60 days to approve, 90 days to disapprove, or nothing happens if they take longer. If the EPA disapproves of the standards change, the agency sends it back to the state.

Solomon said he had been asked what could be done about the rule and the bottom line is “our rules have got to be consistent with state laws. And so while this is a little unusual to say, they did their action, we have to clean up our rules now to make sure the definitions fit.”

He continued by pointing out that the rulemaking process “is more or less procedural” and there are concerns but the commission has to comply with the state laws.

Baumgartner reiterated that it was a statutory directive from the General Assembly and the commission is following the Administrative Procedures Act by making this rule change, which Commissioner Kevin Tweedy acknowledged, but said he’s hoping that the state can disconnect from the federal definition.

“North Carolina has unique resources that I think a lot of people, obviously, from the comments, agree it should be protected. I think we can do that protection in a smart way that that takes into account everybody’s concerns and issues with wetlands. But I think connecting it to the (federal definition) and keeping it that way is just not a good long-term policy,” Tweedy said.

Smith, a longtime attorney, called this “bad policy” and part of the reason is that nothing at the federal level is about which or whether these wetlands are important for ecological or other purposes.

“The only issue at the federal level is federal jurisdiction, and that’s driven by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, and it’s driven by the language of the Clean Water Act,” Smith said. “It’s a jurisdictional issue at the federal level. It has nothing to do with assessment of the value of these wetlands.”

Managing the wetlands is primarily a state responsibility, which is why “it’s a mistake to tie state decisions about the value and protection of wetlands to a federal jurisdictional issue,” Smith said.

Aside from bad policy, she said, it’s bad legislative practice, because there’s a section in the session law that causes the entire session law language to sunset as soon as this rule is adopted.

“What the legislature did not change,” Smith said, is the existing definition of waters of the state in a statute, which will continue to be in effect after the session law expires.

She reiterated a point Solomon made that the commission’s rules cannot be in conflict with state law. “But unfortunately, what the legislature has given us is a situation that will create a conflict with state law.”

Smith voted against approving the rule, saying that she understands “the realities of situation, but between the policy and the legislative process and the, in my view, misuse of the session law in this way, without clarifying a statute, makes this an easy vote against for me.”

The state Environmental Management Commission is expected to vote during its September meeting on a legally mandated wetlands definition rule change and on groundwater quality standards for three industrial chemical substances discharged into the environment.

The commission’s committees are to scheduled to meet the afternoon of Sept. 10 and the full commission is to meet at 9 a.m. Sept. 11, both in the Archdale Building in Raleigh. The public may attend in person. To watch online, use this webinar link for the Sept. 10 committee meetings and this webinar link for the Sept. 11 full commission meeting. The password for both is NCDEQ.

The full commission is to consider adopting the revised definition of “wetlands,” which NCDEQ began applying when a 2023 law became effective on June 27, 2023. The law added to the definition the text, “Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States,” to align the state with the federal definition that recognizes wetlands only as those that are connected to navigable waters.

The law dictated that the revision be immediately implemented and directed the commission to adopt a rule consistent with the revised definition. Division of Water Resources staff presented the proposed rule change in March and then proceeded to public comment and hearing. The proposed rules were published in the North Carolina Register and on the NCDEQ website on May 1, 2025, and a public hearing was held on June 26. The public comment period closed on June 30, according to agenda documents.

The three PFAS that the commission are to vote on for groundwater quality standards are PFOA, PFOS and GenX.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are long-lasting chemicals known to break down very slowly over time, and are used in a variety of industrial and commercial processes as well as consumers products, according to DEQ. Because of the widespread use and persistence in the environment, many PFAS are found in the blood of people and animals, at low levels in a variety of food products, and in the environment.

Committee meetings

The water allocation committee is to meet at 1 p.m. Sept. 10 to hear an update on the North Carolina Flood Resiliency Blueprint, which is part of a statewide flood mitigation planning process.

The groundwater and waste management committee will follow at 2:15 p.m. when they will hear a presentation on the PFAS treatment system reimbursement program.

The water quality committee at its 2:45 p.m. meeting Sept. 10 is to hear an update on PFOA, PFOS, and Gen X monitoring and minimization rules being drafted.

The committee approved a motion in November to “support the effort towards understanding the sources and levels of certain PFAS compounds in NC.”

Division of Water Resources staff were directed to develop a PFAS minimization initiative for industrial direct dischargers to surface water and all significant industrial users that discharge to publicly owned treatment works. Staff are to update the committee on their progress.

This story has been updated.

WILMINGTON – Beams of sunlight broke through dark gray storm clouds suspended in the sky above this historic city on a recent August morning.

The local forecast was calling for rain, the kind of weather that drives tourists from area beaches to explore other experiences the area has to offer. The kind of weather that makes for a busy day at the Battleship North Carolina, the iconic floating World War II memorial moored on the Cape Fear River across from downtown Wilmington.

“This parking lot will be full in another hour,” said Terry DeMeo, the battleship’s director of development.

A year ago, DeMeo might not have made that prediction with as much certainty.

Back then, floodwaters overspilling from the Cape Fear River might have swallowed dozens of parking spaces in the western portion of the parking lot and forced visitors to make a decision: wade through water to get to the museum’s visitor center or head for higher ground.

That’s not much of a worry these days.

A wetland has been built in place of the chronically flooded section of parking lot to help absorb high-tide driven water. A tidal creek now meanders through this area of the property to direct water from the wetland back to the Cape Fear River.

A 500-foot-long and 50-foot-wide bioretention area extends through a paved, raised parking lot that has, since its completion Memorial Day weekend, gone untouched by floodwaters.

A bioswale runs the length of the parking lot next to Battleship Road. Living shorelines blend in with the rest of the natural, wild landscape around the ship’s mooring.

These features are all part of the battleship’s “Living with Water” project, one that accommodates the water rather than try and fight it back.

Construction on the project, some seven years in the making, is mostly complete.

Land next to the battleship has become a well-known and well-documented case in point on the impacts of sea level rise.

Since the memorial opened to the public in 1961, flood events on the property have climbed on a near-steady incline. Over the past six decades, a more than 7,000% increase in tidal flooding frequency has been documented at the site.

Flood events spurred by the rising sea created a sense of urgency for the museum’s leaders. The memorial does not receive regular government funding.

Persistent flooding of the property threatened one of the primary sources of the battleship’s funding – admission fees and gift shop sales.

“We actually lost parking, but that’s how committed we are to this project,” DeMeo said as she looked across the parking lot.

The lot sits at an elevation 6 feet above the old gravel one it replaced earlier this year.

The parking lot slopes to a bioretention area that looks as much like a pleasing water feature as it does a functional holding area for stormwater that allows water to percolate down into the soil.

A total of 450 spaces were at the memorial before the project was built. Today, there are 150 fewer parking spaces on the property.

Of those parking spaces, 100 were unusable due to flooding of the western portion of the old parking lot, DeMeo said. Plans are in the works to finish an overflow lot that may add roughly another 55 spaces.

“So, discounting the unusable old spaces, we expect to come out about even,” DeMeo said later in an email.

The loss of spaces has been a small price to pay for the multimillion-dollar project, one funded through federal and state grants, including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, as well as the USS North Carolina Battleship Commission, Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership, and numerous individual donors.

Within days of the wetland and tidal creek’s completion, birds moved in on the area, DeMeo said.

“That’s been pretty amazing to see the avian community step in right away, which means fish were in there,” she said. “That’s also when we saw the diminution of walking through knee-high flooding.”

The land, she explained, has been able to recreate itself.

The site now hosts researchers from NOAA as well as the University of North Carolina Wilmington, who are monitoring everything from the physical and vegetative parameters of the area to water quality.

The museum’s leaders are now in the early stages of exploring the creation of a living lab partnership with the university and NOAA.

A living lab is a natural fit, “and it’s a way to keep an eye on the project itself,” DeMeo said.

“This is a long-term project,” she said. “We don’t know where it’s ending. We consider ourselves a model for how this can be done and how it can’t be done. We really see ourselves as an opportunity to use as a case study. We had the opportunity and we had the need. That’s why we feel so strongly about serving as a model.”

More than 20% of the world’s wetlands have vanished since 1970, according to a report by the Convention on Wetlands.

The loss of wetlands, including freshwater and coastal marine systems, may equate to a $39 trillion loss in economic benefits by 2050, according to the intergovernmental report released last week.

The Global Wetland Outlook 2025 is based on current publications and information of inland, coastal and marine wetlands and global databases. Wetlands evaluated in the report include seagrass, estuarine waters, salt marshes, mangroves, tidal flats, kelp forests, coral reefs, peatlands, inland marshes and swamps, and lakes, rivers and streams.

“Wetlands are vital to water and food security, and human well-being, so recognising the links between global biodiversity, climate, and water targets and wetland conservation and restoration is critical,” the report states.

The report measures the globe’s wetlands in hectares, a metric unit that is the equivalent to about 2½ acres, where one acre is defined as 100 square meters.

Since 1970, an estimated 177 million hectares of inland marshes and swamps have disappeared, according to the report. And, indications are that the ecological character of wetlands in most regions, including North America, continue to deteriorate.

Declines in wetlands in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa are “notable,” according to the report, “however, the extent of degradation also increased in Europe, North America, and Oceania,” which is the cluster of Pacific islands that includes Australia and New Zealand.

Agriculture and urbanization are the lead contributors to the disappearance and degradation of wetlands on a global scale.

“Agricultural activities remain the largest driver of global wetland loss through conversion to cropland along with other industrial activities, and have resulted in stressed global water resources,” according to the report.

Pollution, invasive species, and climate change-related extreme weather events, including floods, fires, drought, and sea level rise, are also negatively impacting wetlands.

“Wetlands are a high-value resource and an asset to society. When we degrade or destroy wetlands, we reduce the ecosystem services and benefits they provide to people,” the report states.

Annually, the 1,425 million hectares of remaining wetlands across the world give an estimated $7.98 trillion to $39.01 trillion to people, according to the report.

If the world’s remaining wetlands are effectively managed through the next 25 years, they will provide a net present value greater than $205.25 trillion over that time.

The report calls for annual investments of between $275 billion and $550 billion to reverse threats to the remaining wetlands.

The Convention on Wetlands is also known as the Ramsar Convention and is an international treaty focused on wetlands conservation.

The state commission that adopts rules to protect natural resources is expected to hear this week updates on existing measures to improve air and water quality, but the bulk of the July 9-10 meeting will concentrate on the mandated periodic review process for several existing rules.

The Environmental Management Commission Committee meetings are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday and the full commission is to meet at 9 a.m. Thursday, both in the Archdale Building in Raleigh.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality acts as staff and enforces rules for the commission. Meeting agendas and supporting documents, as well as steps to join the meeting virtually or by phone can be found on the commission’s website. 

When the full commission meets Thursday, members are to decide on moving through the multiple steps required to satisfy a general statute that requires existing state rules be reviewed every 10 years.

The rules under review include how the Environmental Management Commission is organized, water resources programs, and streams and wetlands mitigation. The full commission is also to hear an update on the Tar-Pamlico Wastewater Discharge Requirements Rule and progress on a nutrient criteria development plan.

Information on recent Environmental Protection Agency actions is to be delivered during committee meetings.

During the air quality committee meeting at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Division of Air Quality Director Mike Abraczinskas is to give an overview of recent EPA actions relating to federal air quality regulations.

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, committee is expected to review and discuss at its 12:30 p.m. Wednesday meeting the existing agreement between the state and the EPA on the permitting program.

On the state level, during the 10:45 a.m. groundwater and waste management committee meeting, DEQ staff will review the “2024-2034 NC Solid Waste and Materials Management Plan,” which assesses the status of solid waste and materials management in the state.

Aligning North Carolina’s wetlands definition with that of the federal government’s would put the state’s waterways at risk, erase nature’s pollution filtration systems from the land, and increase flooding, speakers at a public hearing said.

More than a dozen people commented during the Thursday night hearing in Raleigh on the revised wetlands definition the North Carolina General Assembly enacted into law two years ago.

In accordance with the 2023 Farm Act, the state’s definition of wetlands must correspond with the federal government’s, which narrows the description of a wetland to having a continuous surface connection to Waters of the United States, or those protected under the Clean Water Act. The federal definition was changed to be consistent with a May 2023 Supreme Court ruling.

In North Carolina, that alignment equates to the loss of protections for an estimated 2.5 million acres of wetlands, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

That agency has been implementing the definition since its approval in June 2023, but the state-appointed Environmental Management Commission, which is responsible for adopting rules that protect, preserve and enhance air and water resources, must go through the rulemaking process to amend the state’s existing wetlands definition.

The law legislators enacted two years ago explicitly directs that the Rules Review Commission cannot challenge the amendment.

Those who spoke at Thursday’s public hearing, a mandated step in the rulemaking process, urged the Environmental Management Commission to work with legislators to rescind the amendment. No one who spoke supported the definition revision.

“I think it’s a shame that the EMC does not have any discretion over what this rule looks like,” said Brooks Rainey, a lobbyist for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Dictating the text of a rule to a rulemaking body takes away the whole point of having a rulemaking body. The North Carolina General Assembly are not experts on wetlands. The Home Builders Association is not an expert on wetlands. The Chamber of Commerce is not an expert on wetlands. But there are many experts on wetlands at DEQ. When rulemaking works as intended, the experts on the subject matter of the rule are involved in crafting the rule. Otherwise, we have ceded environmental rulemaking to political whims and lobby groups.”

Rainey went on to say that the majority party at the General Assembly make “the majority appointments” on the Environmental Management Commission and that the current commission “has greater sway” with this legislature than any in recent memory.

“I urge this EMC to use that influence and ask the General Assembly to stop sending over rules that have been pre-drafted. Take the politics out of rulemaking. Leave it to the experts. It is insulting to this commission, it is insulting to the agency, and it is insulting to the public who are effectively excluded from having any meaningful input at all,” she said.

That lack of input has frustrated residents, environmental advocates and scientists, who argue that ordering a one-size-fits-all definition will be detrimental to a state where wetlands, particularly on the coastal plain, are critical to reducing flooding, cleaning drinking water and supporting fisheries.

“Tying in wetlands protections to federal definitions that change with every administration leaves our communities vulnerable,” said Kerri Allen, a coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. “Why should we hand off our responsibility to protect North Carolina’s natural resources to Washington. Wetlands in North Carolina, like pocosins, Carolina Bays and cypress swamps, deserve to be protected under rules written for our state’s needs, not buried under shifting federal priorities.”

Wetlands provide a host of crucial benefits, said Dr. Adam Gold, coasts and watersheds science manager with the Environmental Defense Fund.

They act as natural flood buffers, provide habitat for recreationally and commercially important wildlife, and filter pollution from waterways.

“Just one acre of wetlands can store up to a million and a half gallons of floodwater,” Gold said.

He cautioned that the federal government may further narrow the definition of wetlands. Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lee Zeldin announced plans to revise the definition of Waters of the United States, also known as WOTUS.

“As someone who has worked in the intersection of environmental policy and coastal resilience for over two decades, I’ve seen firsthand how wetland loss leads to increased flooding, degraded water quality and disappearing fisheries habitat,” said Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider. “These issues are already being impacted and many rural communities and working waterfront communities are already seeing the impact from what’s going on. Stripping protections further will only accelerate harm to ecosystems and the people here in coastal North Carolina.”

Chris Herndon, director of the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, said rolling back wetlands protections will waste millions of taxpayer dollars in flood recovery and contribute to the loss of the state’s natural resources.

“The revised definition freely gives the decision of which wetlands to protect to the federal government. As a result, our state wetlands protections will be determined by federal officials based on federal priorities without any special consideration of the particular importance of wetlands in our state. North Carolinians should decide which North Carolina wetlands should be protected to the benefit of our local communities and local economies,” he said.

Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney Julie Youngman said that, though the commission has been mandated to pass the rule, there is no deadline in when the rule must be established.

And, since the state’s leading environmental agency is complying with the law, there is “no harm being done to the will of the legislature by slowing it down and working with the legislature to try to fix the mistake that’s been made,” she said.

“It just defies logic that we are putting our fate in the hands of a federal administration that doesn’t seem to care about the same values that we care about here in North Carolina,” Youngman said. “There is not deadline in the statute. Take your time, work with the legislature, see if you can’t come up with a commonsense way to keep the wetland protections that we have in place, in place.”

DEQ will accept public comments through today via email with the subject line “Wetland Definition Amendment” to Sue.Homewood@deq.nc.gov and by mail to Sue Homewood, Division of Water Resources, 1617 Main Service Center, Raleigh NC 27699-1617.

The EMC is anticipated to hear recommendations on the revised rule during its Sept. 11 meeting. The 2023 Farm Act mandates that the rule cannot become effective until after legislative review, which is anticipated to take place during the General Assembly’s 2026 session.

The Environmental Protection Agency has final approval authority over the rule.

A coastwide clean water advocacy organization is urging the public to speak out next week during a hearing in Raleigh on a rule that would change the definition of what constitutes protected wetlands in the state.

The public may attend in-person or join the June 26 Division of Water Resources hearing by computer or phone.

The nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, on Tuesday asked its supporters to comment on the rule change mandated by the legislature in 2023 that “limits wetlands protected under state water quality rules to those under federal jurisdiction.”

The North Carolina General Assembly, via the 2023 Farm Act, effective June 27, 2023, required “immediate implementation of the revision and directed the Environmental Management Commission to adopt a rule consistent with the revised definition.”

The commission has advanced the proposed rule and the Office of State Budget and Management approved the required regulatory impact analysis on the last day of December.

The Coastal Federation in its advocacy email urged people to “send a powerful message to state officials: the new definition puts millions of acres of wetlands – and flood protection, clean water, and wildlife they support – at risk.”

The organization said lawmakers need to understand “the real harm this rule will cause and the need to correct it.”

The Coastal Federation lists 10 issues it said will be made worse as a result of the rule change, including flooding, irresponsible development, rising insurance and other costs, water quality and the loss of natural resources and state controls.

“By forcing North Carolina’s Environmental Management Commission (EMC) to adopt a rule that ties state wetlands protections to federal limits, the General Assembly is leaving valuable state wetlands vulnerable to being developed without the developer having to apply for a permit that would contain protective conditions,” the organization said in its email.

The meeting will be 6-9 p.m. Thursday, June 26, in the ground floor hearing room of the Archdale Building, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh.

To attend virtually, log in via WebEx using Meeting No. 2425 792 4510, password: NCDEQ; or by phone at 415-655-0003 and access code 2425 792 4510.

Register to comment online by noon June 26. Register onsite starting at 5:30 p.m.

Anyone may comment, but speakers may be limited to three minutes.

Written comments may also be submitted by June 30. Email comments to: Sue.Homewood@deq.nc.gov using the subject line: “Wetland Definition Amendment.”

A public hearing on the state’s new classification of “wetlands” is set for late June.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources has scheduled a hearing June 26 to accept public comments on the revised wetlands definition’s codification into state rules.

Legislators in June 2023 voted into the law the revised definition, which aligns with the federal classification of wetlands as those that have a “continuous surface connection.” State law dictated immediate implementation of the revision and that the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission adopt a rule consistent with the revised definition.

The hearing in June will begin at 6 p.m. in the ground floor hearing room, Archdale Building, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh. Speaker registration and sign-in will begin at 5:30 p.m.

To join virtually, visit  https://ncgov.webex.com/ncgov/j.php?MTID=mc924957b9d3395883ef8e61c5eda6d54, meeting number 2425 792 4510, password NCDEQ. Those who wish to comment via Webex must register to speak by noon June 26.

Online speakers are asked to login to Webex using first and last name so that the meeting host can identify and call on each person wishing to comment. Additional information on ways to join the hearing are available at https://www.deq.nc.gov/about/boards-and-commissions/how-attend-webex-meeting-0.

Participants may also join by phone by dialing 1-415-655-0003, access code 2425 792 4510.

The hearing will end by 9 p.m. Depending on the number of speakers, the hearing officer may limit comment times to allow everyone an opportunity to be heard.

Written comments will be accepted through June 30 via email with the subject line “Wetland Definition Amendment” to Sue.Homewood@deq.nc.gov and by mail to Sue Homewood, Division of Water Resources, 1617 Mail Service Center, Raleigh NC 27699-1617.

The two federal agencies that are to reviewing the definition of “waters of the United States,” often called WOTUS and a distinguishing characteristic under the Clean Water Act, have scheduled the first round of listening sessions for next week.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army, which oversees the Army Corps of Engineers, are holding the public input meetings both virtually and at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced March 12 plans to revise the definition of WOTUS to align with the Supreme Court’s May 2023 decision in the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency “while eliminating red tape, cutting compliance costs, and reducing the cost of living,” according to the agency. “To achieve this vision, the agencies will develop a proposed rule to revise the 2023 definition of WOTUS.”

Related: EPA targets remaining federal isolated wetlands protections

Participation in the session set for 9:30 a.m. to noon Tuesday, April 29, is limited to state government agencies and member organizations. The listening session for Tribes will be virtually held 1-3:30 p.m. April 30.

From 9:30 p.m. to noon Thursday, May 1, the input session is for industry and agricultural stakeholders and the 1 p.m. that is to follow is for environmental and conservation stakeholders. Registration is required and can be done on the EPA website.

EPA officials said that listening sessions for local governments and the public will be announced.

“The agencies are committed to obtaining targeted input from a full spectrum of co-regulators and stakeholders on key topic areas related to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ in light of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, regarding ‘continuous surface connection,’ ‘relatively permanent,’ and jurisdictional versus non-jurisdictional ditches,” according to the EPA.

EPA’s Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water Peggy Brown and Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds Division Director Stacey Jensen will be joined by Milton Boyd, assistant counsel with the Corps for the sessions.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Morty Gaskill is a member of the North Carolina Coastal Federation Board of Directors. The nonprofit advocacy organization publishes Coastal Review, which remains editorially independent.

In 1976, a North Carolina Sea Grant newsletter sounded the alarm: large-scale land drainage was wiping out wetlands that protect our coastal fisheries. Fishermen saw their livelihoods at risk and 3,000 of them pleaded for action.

“We, the undersigned, being commercial and sport fishermen who use the creeks, rivers, and bays adjacent to Pamlico Sound and the waters of Pamlico Sound, petition the Marine Fisheries Commission and state officials as follows: … to investigate the effect of changing salinity in said waters upon the economy of Pamlico Drainage areas and to initiate proper controls to insure the continued health of commercial and sport fishing in this area.”

They saw it coming. But there was hope — state and federal leaders acted. For decades, farming, forestry, development, and fisheries co-existed under federal and state wetland safeguards — rules that carefully balanced economic growth and environmental protection. These safeguards didn’t create unbearable hardships; they provided stability for all.

Yet here we are again, nearly 50 years later, facing the same crisis — not just for our fisheries, but for our homes, businesses, and communities. Given the changing economic and environmental conditions of many coastal communities across North Carolina, it could not come at a worse time.

This time, the rollback of wetland protections isn’t coming from local drainage operations. It’s happening due to recent federal and state government actions. The Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision has dramatically narrowed the definition of federally protected wetlands. The North Carolina General Assembly followed suit, choosing to adopt the weaker federal standard instead of maintaining the stronger state level protections that had been in place for years. And now, under new leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is further diluting the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, stripping even more protections from wetlands and streams that feed our coastal estuaries.

The consequences? More wetlands drained. More freshwater rushing unchecked into saltwater nurseries. More flooding. More property damage.

Costly gamble

History has already shown us what happens when we fail to protect our wetlands. In 1976, Rose Bay fisherman Troy W. Mayo spoke out as catches dwindled.

“Twenty-five years ago, I owned a 26-foot shad boat. We used to go out in Rose Bay, two people, for five or six hours and we’d catch 35 to 40 tubs of oysters—that was two men pulling by hand,” said Mayo. “Today you go out in this same area with a power winder and all modern equipment, and I’d be surprised if you catch 10 tubs of oysters.”

Scientists confirmed what fishermen already knew. “Salinity is a major ingredient for survival in the estuaries”; reported the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. Preston Pate, who studied juvenile shrimp in Rose Bay, found that freshwater intrusion “definitely disrupted the salinity of small creeks in the area. The result was a smaller shrimp harvest by fishermen.”

But wetland loss isn’t just bad for fisheries. Wetlands absorb floodwaters, buffer storm surges, and keep pollution out of our waterways. Every acre lost means more homes and businesses at risk.

In North Carolina, our coastal communities have already been battered by hurricanes, rising insurance costs, rising property taxes, lack of affordable housing, and an aging drainage infrastructure that can’t keep up with heavier rains. Weakening wetland protections only adds fuel to the fire. It shifts costs onto property owners, local governments, and taxpayers — many of whom will be left paying for flood damage that could have been prevented.

Commonsense approach to conservation

Those lessons from the 1970s helped shape policies that kept North Carolina’s wetlands intact for decades. But now, history is repeating itself. The rollback of WOTUS protections and the state’s decision to weaken its own rules mean more wetlands will be drained, increasing flooding, pollution, and economic losses.

This shouldn’t be a divisive political issue. Wetland protections aren’t just about environmental policy — they’re about practical economics, public safety, and community well-being. They help prevent costly flood damage, safeguard private property, and support the resilience of coastal economies that depend on fisheries, tourism, and clean water.

Jim Brown of the Division of Marine Fisheries put it best nearly 50 years ago:

“We love beans and beef, and we have a serious need to extend agricultural operations. At the same time, we dearly love shrimp and oysters. There exists a very serious need for imposing compatibility between the two. Can it be done? That’s the question. Or do we just keep plodding along with our fingers crossed?”

If we ignore history, we aren’t just crossing our fingers — we are guaranteeing a grim future for our coastal communities. The fishermen of Rose Bay warned us decades ago. Will we listen this time? Or will we, once again, pay the price for failing to protect the wetlands that sustain our way of life?

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation announced this week that the nonprofit was entering its third year of restoration efforts at Carolina Beach State Park.

The project aims to enhance wetland habitat, estuarine shorelines, and subtidal oyster reefs.

Wetlands are crucial for the health and resilience of North Carolina’s coast, says the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. Wetlands act as natural barriers against storms, filter pollutants, provide habitat for diverse wildlife, and support the livelihoods of coastal communities.

“The goals for wetland restoration at Carolina Beach State Park were driven by the ecosystem services these habitats provide. The final phase of this project is the construction of an observation platform for visitors to learn about critical wetland habitats within our dynamic coastal systems,” said Coastal Federation Coastal Specialist Georgia Busch.

Previously overrun by the invasive plant, phragmites, the park partnered with the Coastal Federation to restore the habitat using native plants that benefit birds, mammals and aquatic life. To connect visitors with the ecosystem, the park is building an observation platform for educational talks and birdwatching opportunities.

“The addition of the overlook at Carolina Beach State Park will make an excellent area for observations of wildlife in their habitat that may otherwise be difficult to access,” said Jesse Anderson, lead ranger at the park. Anderson supervises natural resource management in the park, including the three-year restoration project. “We hope these educational opportunities will highlight the success of invasive species removal and wetland habitat restoration, allowing wildlife to call this space ‘home’.”

Carolina Beach State Park visitors are asked to exercise caution when hiking or accessing the Sugarloaf Trail via the marina parking lot. Hikers should pay special attention to signage and barricades indicating temporary trail closures during construction, which is expected to begin in the next few weeks.

The wetland restoration project at Carolina Beach State Park is a component of the Restoration Plan for the Natural Resources Damages Assessment for the Kerr-McGee EPA Superfund Site in Navassa. Trustees are the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Officials also thanked partners at the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation and the dedicated staff at Carolina Beach State Park.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said last week that he plans to make good on a commitment to revise the “waters of the United States” definition, leading conservation groups to worry what will happen to federally protected waters and wetlands.

One advocate says the new administration’s approach turns a blind eye to science showing how all wetlands — most especially those to be erased from federal jurisdiction – serve vital protective functions.

Sworn in Jan. 29 to lead the federal agency with the mission to protect the nation’s human health and environment, Zeldin explained during a press briefing March 12 that while going through the confirmation process, he had spoken with senators who “were passionately advocating on behalf of their farmers, their ranchers and other land owners” about issues concerning waters of the U.S., often called by the acronym WOTUS.

He vowed that as soon as he got into office, he would do everything in his power to fix “WOTUS once and for all” and the agency is “pursuing a definition that is simple, that is durable and it will withstand the test of time,” Zeldin said.

The federal definition has been the focus of a fair number of lawsuits, since it was first approved as part of the Clean Water Act, which is administered by the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers. Enacted in 1972, the act prohibits discharging pollutants without a permit from a point source into “navigable waters,” defined in the statute as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.”

The EPA calls “waters of the United States” a threshold term that “establishes the geographic scope of federal jurisdiction” under the Clean Water Act. The term “waters of the United States” is not defined within the Clean Water Act. Agencies were given the authority at the time to determine what qualifies, and the definition has undergone a few modifications since then.

The most recent change is the result of a May 2023 Supreme Court decision known by the plaintiffs’ surname, Sackett v. EPA. Judges ruled in favor of the Idaho landowners, who argued that the section of their property they were fined for backfilling was not considered “waters of the United States” because the wetlands were not adjacent to navigable waters. The case led to the federal definition of WOTUS being amended to exclude noncontiguous wetlands.

The EPA stated March 12 in a press release that the Sackett case, “which stated that the Clean Water Act’s use of ‘waters’ encompasses only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water forming streams, oceans, rivers and lakes,” will guide the review.

As part of the process, the agencies said in the announcement that there were plans to hold at least six listening sessions over the next few months both virtually and in person. Registration and dates are to be posted on the EPA website.

Zeldin said during the press conference that, “what we’re looking for is to simply follow the guidance from Sackett. It gave us a clear path in determining what waters are waters of the United States. It found that only those wetlands with a quote, ‘continuous surface connection,’ to a relatively permanent water are waters of the United States,” Zeldin said, adding that the court also struck down the long-used “significant nexus test, leaving only those wetlands that abut or are adjacent to waters of the United States as jurisdictional.”

Republican senators and representatives offered their support during the briefing as well as Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall.

“WOTUS has been a pain in the side for our farmers and ranchers. Our farmers and ranchers want to do what’s right; they just want to know what right is,” Duvall said, adding that the last administration had “vague wording like ‘relatively permanent.’ Can anybody define that,” Duvall asked. “We look forward to that clarity.”

In a statement last week, National Association of Home Builders Chairman Buddy Hughes, a home builder and developer from Lexington, said the organization “commends the EPA for moving to make changes to the WOTUS rule that will protect our nation’s waterways and provide builders and developers the clarity and certainty they need in the federal wetlands permitting process to help house America’s citizens.”

Opposition in the week since the announcement has been at least as equally vocal and perhaps more strongly worded.

The Environmental Protection Network, an organization of more than 650 former EPA career staff and political appointees, said in a release that it “strongly condemns” the EPA’s “rollback of federally protected waters and wetlands, coupled with the release of a new guidance that significantly narrows the scope of the Clean Water Act.”

A former EPA office director Betsy Southerland warned in a statement from the network that “The ‘Sackett’ decision excluded about 60% of wetlands and all ephemeral streams from federal protection. With this guidance, Administrator Zeldin is now codifying an even narrower interpretation of ‘relatively permanent waters,’ which could strip protections from countless seasonal and intermittent streams. Scientific evidence is unequivocal: These waters are vital to maintaining the health of major rivers and lakes. Without them, drinking water quality will decline, and the nation’s waters will be further imperiled.”

Adam Gold, Coasts and Watersheds Science manager for the Environmental Defense Fund, told Coastal Review that with the Trump administration’s intention to narrowly implement the 2023 Supreme Court Sackett v. EPA decision was, “to collect public comment on ambiguous terms from the Sackett decision, like a ‘continuous surface connection.’ This process will likely further limit protections for North Carolina’s wetlands.”

Gold said that while it remains to be seen if there will be a new WOTUS rule from this process, the new EPA announcement seems to point toward “a potential wetness test or surface water requirement where wetlands may be excluded from Clean Water Act protections if they dry out, even for part of the year, and therefore do not have a ‘continuous surface connection’ to water bodies.

“This approach ignores the science that clearly shows how all wetlands, especially those that would be most likely to lose protections, provide essential flood reduction, water quality and ecologic benefits.”

On the state level

Around the same time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sacketts, the North Carolina General Assembly directed the state Environmental Management Commission in the 2023 Farm Act to align the state definition of wetlands with the federal definition. This removed any state wetlands protections beyond those meeting the federal definition.

The law required that the commission insert the sentence, “Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by” the federal code as it was written into the state’s wetlands definition, and the wording may not be contested by the Rules Review Commission.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality began implementing the definition when the act was passed in June 2023 and the Environmental Management Commission has been going through the steps to codify the rule.

“The EPA guidance confirms that federal protection for wetlands will be limited and millions of wetlands, including coastal wetlands, will be at risk,” Grady O’Brien, water policy manager for the North Carolina Conservation Network, told Coastal Review.

“However, federal jurisdiction has no relationship to North Carolina’s interest in protecting wetlands for flood storage,” he continued. “In fact, the Sackett decision stated that the Supreme Court expected states to protect wetlands independent of federal jurisdiction. Now would be a good time for the North Carolina General Assembly to revisit state wetlands protections to prevent additional flooding.”

Gold, with the Environmental Defense Fund, said that if wetlands must have surface water connections nearly year-round to have Clean Water Act protections, the organization’s research published last year in Science estimates that this could leave up to 3.2 million acres of nontidal wetlands in the state without that layer of federal protection.

“The lack of state-level wetlands protections in North Carolina means that the only layers of protection left could be local protections or ‘protected’ public lands. With forthcoming changes to the WOTUS definition, we can expect increasing wetlands loss and increasing risks to people and homes due to more dangerous flooding, declining water quality and the loss of vital habitat,” Gold said.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Julie Youngman told Coastal Review that Trump’s EPA announced that it intended to roll back federal wetland protections even further, “endangering North Carolinians because the General Assembly has tied us directly to whatever the federal government does, no matter how harmful to North Carolinians. In light of EPA’s malicious actions, the General Assembly must protect North Carolina’s wetlands at the state level, to protect communities from flooding, hurricanes, and harm to our water supplies and seafood industry.”

Related: Commission OKs proposed wetlands rule for public comment

Jessie Ritter, associate vice president of water and coasts with the National Wildlife Federation, told Coastal Review that North Carolina’s wetlands and waterways are essential to the health of our coasts because they buoy our fisheries, support the economy and buffer communities from extreme weather.

“A Supreme Court decision in 2023 left many North Carolina wetlands and streams without federal protection and a state law passed later that year also eliminated state protections for these waters,” Ritter said. “The recent announcement from the EPA suggests the agency plans to remove federal safeguards for even more water bodies. If this happens, coastal communities will see increased development immediately upstream, leading to more flood-prone rivers that carry dirtier water to our bays.”

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider told Coastal Review that as a lifelong coastal North Carolinian, she knows firsthand that wetlands are more than just a word being debated over definitions.

“Wetlands are our first line of defense against flooding, acting like natural sponges that absorb stormwater before it can rush into our communities “One acre of wetland can hold up to 1.5 million gallons of water, reducing flood risks and protecting our homes and businesses. They also filter out pollution and prevent runoff from overwhelming our coastal waters,” Rider said.

The Environmental Management Commission voted to send to public notice and hearing a proposed amendment to “clarify the definition of wetlands” Thursday during its meeting in Raleigh.

Commissioners Yvonne Bailey, Marion Deerhake, Dr. Jackie MacDonald Gibson and Robin Smith all voted against the motion to advance new language that codifies reduced state protections.

The commission, which directs and creates rules for several divisions under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, was ordered close to two years ago in a law called the 2023 Farm Act to insert into the definition of wetlands one sentence that aligns the state’s definition of wetlands to the federal definition, which narrowed Clean Water Act jurisdiction.

The commission’s vote took place the day after Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced plans to revise the definition of “Waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, the acronym given to federally regulation waters.

Sue Homewood, senior branch coordinator with the Division of Water Resources, told the commission Thursday that the law required changing the definition in the state administrative code, “and it specified exactly the language to be changed, that ‘wetlands classified as Waters of the State are restricted to Waters of the United States as defined by’ federal regulations.”

NCDEQ has been implementing the definition since it was approved in June 2023, as directed by the North Carolina General Assembly, while the commission goes through the rulemaking process to add that sentence to the existing definition of “wetlands” in the general statute.

The order contains explicit directions that the amendment had to be included as written and couldn’t be challenged by the Rules Review Commission.

Smith said she was voting in protest against the motion because it was “extremely bad environmental policy to outsource decisions about protection of state waters to the decision of a federal agency about what federal jurisdiction is. So that’s just fundamentally not a good direction.”

Smith said that a process question also comes up, “that the General Assembly unfortunately has gotten into what I think is the very bad habit of doing what they did with this session law, which is to attempt to dictate the wording of an administrative rule and then cause the session law to expire when the rule is adopted, and without ever changing fundamental general statutes that actually do define what state waters are.”

The state already operates under an existing definition of waters in the statute, she said.

Smith said the existing state waters definition includes “any stream, river, brook, swamp, lake, sound, tidal estuary, bay, creek, reservoir, waterway, or other body or accumulation of water, whether surface or underground, public or private, or natural or artificial, that is contained in, flows through, or borders upon any portion of this State, including any portion of the Atlantic Ocean over which the State has jurisdiction.”

This definition in the statute has not been amended by the General Assembly, Smith said, adding that the law expires when the rule is adopted.

“I think it raises questions of whether, looking toward the future, whether the rule will be considered consistent with state law, given the failure of the General Assembly to actually amend the definition of waters in the general statute, and that’s just a bad practice,” Smith said.

She added that she thinks this rule amendment “creates a really unfortunate situation in terms of potential conflict” between Environmental Management Commission rules and the statutes under which the commission operates its water permitting programs. “For that reason, I’m going to vote against. It’s a protest vote. I think it’s just a terrible process legally and administratively.”

Commissioner Steve Keen asked Smith whether she planned “to vote to violate the statute” because the statute directs the rule change.

Smith said she was voting against adoption of the rule, “because I believe the rule will turn out to be inconsistent with a general statute that has not been amended, and the session law that directed the change in the rule will expire as soon as the rule is adopted. That’s in the session law itself.”

Commissioner Kevin Tweedy “completely” agreed with Smith, calling the logic behind the amendment poor in two respects: lost wetlands protections and diminished flood resiliency.

“We’re putting millions and millions of dollars into that,” Tweedy said. “It’s like one thing is fighting the other, and I just don’t think it’s good policy.”

Homewood, with the Division of Water Resources, said that the public comment period for the wetlands definition amendment will likely take place in April, and the public hearing would be between June 2 and June 16, when the comment period is expected to end. After that, a hearing officer’s report will be brought back to the commission in September and if approved, would go to the Office of Administrative Hearings, or OAH.

Related: Commission set to further curb state wetlands protections

Because the law exempts the rule change from Rules Review Commission review, its effective date would be pending a legislative review, she said, and that timing would be with the 2026 session.

“Because these rules are part of the water quality standards and the triennial review, the rule amendment post-legislative approval, would have to go to EPA for final approval,” she said, “so we cannot predict an implementation date. But as I said, we are implementing these right now.”

When the Environmental Management Commission was discussing the motion to amend the definition of wetlands on the state level, there was no mention of the EPA’s intention to overhaul the WOTUS definition.

The EPA and Department of the Army, which oversees the Corps of Engineers, announced Wednesday a joint memorandum issuing guidance to field staff on the implementation of “continuous surface connection” consistent with the Supreme Court’s May 25, 2023, decision in the case of Sackett v. EPA.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sacketts of Idaho who argued that the wetlands they were backfilling on their property did not qualify as jurisdictional wetlands under the federal definition. The EPA adjusted later in 2023 its definition to conform to the Supreme Court decision.

The definition states that wetlands must have a “continuous surface connection” to federally protected waters to qualify as waters of the United States and be protected under the Clean Water Act.

The Clean Water Act was put in place in 1972 and prohibits discharging pollutants from a point source into “navigable waters” unless otherwise authorized. Navigable waters are defined in the Clean Water Act as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” WOTUS is not defined in the act itself but is in the code of federal regulations.

“We want clean water for all Americans supported by clear and consistent rules for all states, farmers, and small businesses,” Zeldin said in a statement. “The previous Administration’s definition of ‘waters of the United States’ placed unfair burdens on the American people and drove up the cost of doing business. Our goal is to protect America’s water resources consistent with the law of the land while empowering American farmers, landowners, entrepreneurs, and families to help Power the Great American Comeback.”

It has been nearly two years since the North Carolina General Assembly ordered the Environmental Management Commission to adopt a rule that aligns the state’s definition of wetlands with the federal definition, which was narrowed by a May 2023 Supreme Court decision.

Despite the vocal objections from conservation organizations and what the commission claims to be “differences” with the state agency it oversees, members are expected to consider during its meeting Thursday in Raleigh going to public notice and hearing for the proposed amendment to the state’s definition of wetlands, one of the many steps required in the rulemaking process.

The 15-member commission adopts rules for several divisions of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, including the divisions of Air Quality, Land Resources, Waste Management and Water Resources.

The General Assembly directed the commission in a 2023 law to implement the rule that reads, “Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by (the Code of Federal Regulations).”

The current definition of Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, effective Sept. 8, 2023, includes navigable waters, its tributaries and adjacent wetlands, but excludes isolated wetlands, which are wetlands without a surface connection to the jurisdictional waters. The federal definition is part of a decades-long discussion, and, in some cases, disagreement, linked to the Clean Water Act enacted in 1972.

A DEQ spokesperson told Coastal Review in an email that the Division of Water Resources began implementing the new definition of wetlands following the General Assembly’s adoption of that law, also called the 2023 Farm Act, which included a revised definition of wetlands found in the state administrative code.

“The rules that are moving forward in the N.C. Environmental Management Commission are codifying the new definition in the rules. The process of codifying a rule requires approval by the EMC and a public hearing,” they added.

Grady O’Brien, water policy manager for the North Carolina Conservation Network, explained that the change to the wetlands definition rule the commission is considering is required by the law from the 2023 legislative session.

“Unfortunately, this means there’s no room to alter the language at this point; any further change would require legislative direction. It’s important to note that the state didn’t have to make this change — North Carolina had a state-level definition for wetlands that could have remained,” he added.

That definition covers wetlands not directly connected to other bodies of water.

“By passing the 2023 Farm Act that ordered the EMC to adopt this rule to gut North Carolina’s wetlands protections, North Carolina’s legislature failed to protect our water quality, communities, economy, and special natural resources. With this rulemaking, 2.5 million acres of flood-storing, water-filtering wetlands will be at risk of pollution and destruction,” Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Julie Youngman told Coastal Review.

During its Jan. 8 meeting, the commission’s water quality committee approved taking the request before the full commission. During the March 13 meeting, members are to be asked to consider initiating the rulemaking process by proceeding to public notice and hearing and to amend “Definitions” to comply with the 2023 session law, according to agenda documents.

“The revised definition of ‘wetlands’ in the rule proposed for amendment is applicable to all wetlands in North Carolina. Any effects of the changes are effects imposed by the Session Law and are not caused by the proposed rule amendments directly,” according to the division.

If the commission decides to move forward on Thursday and follows the staff’s suggested timeline, the public comment period could start April 15. A public hearing would be held no sooner than June 2 but before the comment period ends June 16.

But that public comment period might just be an exercise in futility.

Youngman explained that the way that section 15 of the 2023 Farm Act is written, “the General Assembly clearly intended to take away the public’s right to participate meaningfully in the rulemaking process and forbid anyone from challenging the elimination of wetlands protections in court.”

Section 15 states “The Commission shall adopt a rule to amend the Wetlands Definition Rule consistent with subsection (c) of this section” and “the rule adopted by the Commission pursuant to this section shall be substantively identical to the provisions of subsection (c)of this section,” which shows that the commission is being ordered to adopt the rule exactly as the General Assembly phrased it, she said.

The next sentence, the “Rules adopted pursuant to this section are not subject to Part 3 of Article 2A of Chapter 150B of the General Statutes,” is where the General Assembly is saying that no one can challenge the rule, she said. That state law refers to the rules review process.  

“DEQ will consider all public comments received during the public comment period for the EMC’s consideration prior to it adopting the final rule,” a DEQ representative explained.

Youngman said that “we hope that the time lag in the EMC adopting the rule has given the General Assembly an opportunity to realize how harmful the anti-wetlands provision of the 2023 Farm Act is and pass a new law to protect wetlands after all.”

According to the commission’s annual report about 2024 for the General Assembly, dated Jan. 1, 2025, members “began the rulemaking process per the statute; however, the rulemaking remained in committee due to differences between the EMC and DEQ over the regulatory impact analysis. It is noted that the statute made the changes in law and they are in effect until the new rule is approved.”

The Farm Act of 2023 was filed April 4 of that year and included a “Clarify Definition Of Wetlands” stating that “Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by 33 C.F.R. § 328.3 and 40 C.F.R. § 230.3″ and was amended a few weeks later to add the exclusion of converted cropland from the wetlands definition.

The next month, the Supreme Court changed the federal definition to waters of the United States.

The court, in its decision in what was known as Sackett v. EPA, ruled in favor of the Idaho landowners. The Sacketts had argued that their property was not considered “waters of the United States” because the wetlands the EPA had fined them for backfilling were not adjacent to navigable waters. The court’s decision led to the federal definition of WOTUS being amended to exclude noncontiguous wetlands.  

Then-Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the state measure on June 23, 2023, because of the wetlands provision, but the veto was overridden four days later, with the law taking effect that same day.

“The provision in this bill that severely weakens protection for wetlands means more severe flooding for homes, roads and businesses and dirtier water for our people, particularly in eastern North Carolina. This provision coupled with the drastic weakening of federal rules caused by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Sackett case, leaves approximately 2.5 million acres, or about one half of our state’s wetlands, unprotected,” Cooper said at the time. “The General Assembly has allocated tens of millions of dollars to protect the state from flooding and my administration is working to stop pollution like PFAS and other contaminants. This bill reverses our progress and leaves the state vulnerable without vital flood mitigation and water purification tools.”

O’Brien told Coastal Review that the effects of the change to the state wetlands definition were “further complicated” by the Sackett decision, which reduced the amount of wetlands protected under the federal definition.

“For instance, North Carolina’s isolated wetlands, previously protected by statute, will likely no longer qualify as wetlands under the new definition and thus not be protected,” he said.

North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis told Coastal Review that, although the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Sackett case left millions of acres of freshwater wetlands unprotected across the nation, the court recognized the high value of these habitats in reducing flooding, improving water quality, and supporting important wildlife.

“Their decision left the states with the responsibility to protect these systems, but the EMC is now required to move forward with rules that leave vast acreages of freshwater wetlands unprotected in North Carolina. We are hopeful that the General Assembly will revisit this issue in this year’s legislative session,” Davis said.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider told Coastal Review that the Environmental Management Commission’s review of wetland definitions comes at a critical time.

“Federal rollbacks have left many of our wetlands vulnerable, and weakening protections at the state level will only make things worse,” Rider said.

“The EMC must not only maintain but strengthen protections for isolated and non-federally jurisdictional wetlands by adopting a state-specific definition that prioritizes coastal resilience,” she said. “The EMC should implement stricter stormwater management, prioritize wetland conservation over mitigation banking, and integrate wetland protections into broader plans. By implementing robust state-level protections, North Carolina can uphold its commitment to preserving vital wetland ecosystems for current and future generations.”

About the meeting

The commission’s committee meetings are scheduled for Wednesday and the full commission is to meet Thursday in the ground floor hearing room of the Archdale Building in Raleigh. The public can attend in person or join the meeting by computer or phone. Instructions to access the meeting are on the website.

Also during this week’s meeting, the full commission is expected to take up rules for air permitting and wastewater design flow rates.

During the water quality committee meeting scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, members are expected to hear a presentation of draft per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, monitoring and minimization rules for industrial direct dischargers and significant industrial users.

A full agenda and related documents are available on the website.   

This post has been updated.

From the editor:

Sunday is World Wetlands Day.

The United Nations in 2021 adopted a resolution to commemorate annually on Feb. 2 the adoption of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, an international treaty signed in 1971. The observance actually dates back to 1997.

Wetlands across the state serve important roles, and especially here on the North Carolina coast, they surround us. They help provide the quality of life and desirability that lure so many. They buffer us from tropical cyclones and flooding. They help sequester carbon making them critical for mitigating the effects of climate change and to biodiversity and human health. They are nurseries and habitat for countless marine and bird species.

To many regular Coastal Review readers, these points may seem obvious, but they are also key messages behind the recognition of World Wetlands Day, and our wetlands are increasingly imperiled.

The Ramsar Convention defines numerous distinct types of wetlands, organized into three main categories: marine/coastal wetlands, inland wetlands and human-made wetlands. Included among inland wetlands are intermittent or seasonal pools, streams, lakes and rivers.

Article 1 of the UN treaty more broadly defines wetlands as “areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.”

That’s about 20 feet deep for the metrically challenged. It’s also distant from the U.S. Supreme Court’s myopic, unscientific definition set forth in its 2023 Sackett decision. The ruling found that only wetlands with “a continuous surface connection to” water bodies that are “‘waters of the United States’ in their own right,” those to which we so often refer as “WOTUS,” so that they are “indistinguishable” from those waters, are protected under the Clean Water Act.

The decision was merely the first ominous domino to fall for North Carolina’s wetlands.

“In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA, the only thing now protecting many North Carolina communities from being flooded in the coming years is the state’s existing ban on paving over wetlands without a permit,” Grady McCallie, policy director with the North Carolina Conservation Network, said at the time, noting that state law was all that was left, “literally protecting lives and property.”

But later that same year, the North Carolina General Assembly saw fit to narrow protections that were tailored to our specific vulnerabilities as a region, placing isolated wetlands outside both state and federal jurisdictions and, therefore, more likely subject to development or degradation.

At the time, state environmental staff estimated that, as a result of both the Supreme Court decision and state legislative action, around 2.5 million acres, or about half of North Carolina’s wetlands and more than 7% of the state’s total landmass, were left unprotected.

Wetlands are too critically important to endanger in this way. The point of World Wetlands Day is to each year raise awareness of this key fact so conveniently disregarded by those wielding power. For 2025, the theme for the day is “Protecting Wetlands for Our Common Future.”

Another definition: A “common future” is one we all share.

“Life thrives in wetlands, and human life depends on them,” said Secretary General of the Convention on Wetlands Dr. Musonda Mumba in a statement marking World Wetlands Day 2025. “Wetlands provide the home or breeding ground of many endangered and threatened species and a multitude of endemic plants and animals can only survive in certain wetland locations. Beyond the clean water and food that wetlands provide, they help protect against natural disasters by mitigating the impact of storm surges, floods and droughts.”

Now, with a new administration in Washington rapidly acting on its explicitly stated intent to eliminate or at least further diminish federal water quality, air quality and other environmental safeguards — while also dismantling from within the agencies that enforce regulations and stripping away any environmental justice and civil rights responsibilities in their purview — it’s imperative to recognize how important wetlands are to our coastal way of life. The challenge to maintain and preserve coastal protections throughout the coming deregulatory onslaught has never been more daunting, nor more critical.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, has over the course of its four-decade history often phrased the message in pure bumper-sticker simplicity, “No Wetlands, No Seafood.” That’s because it’s a message that resonates.

The nonprofit’s more complete, updated message is to “protect and restore coastal water quality and habitats throughout the North Carolina coast by collaborating with and engaging people from all walks of life who are committed to preserving the coast for now and the future.” Far from simple, it’s hard work that already requires many hands.

Coastal Review strives to always present unbiased reporting on just these issues, encompassing science, energy, government, education, laws, history and culture. Our journalists work to provide all relevant perspectives in our environmental reporting – not the least of which are economic factors. And we will continue this important work, bringing you, our valued readers, the most complete and timely information possible, so that you can better understand and then decide. Of course, as a nonprofit organization, your financial support can help us serve you better in this regard.

Eastern North Carolina’s economy and well-being and those of our nation depend on clean water and healthy wetlands. The people of this region demand it, despite whatever their predominant voter registrations or candidate preferences may indicate, because nobody voted for environmental destruction, endangering public health or imperiling our coastal way of life.

Views expressed herein are solely those of the editor.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust announced Wednesday that an additional 593 acres along the Newport River have been purchased from Weyerhaeuser Co. and transferred to North Carolina Coastal Federation for long-term management and restoration.

The Coastal Land Trust purchased the acreage in November, a tract that features estuarine marsh, managed loblolly pine forest, and bottomland hardwoods along more than 4 miles of the river and its tributaries.

The property lies within the Newport River and Black Creek Natural Heritage Area, which the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program has deemed of “very high ecological significance.”

Earlier this year: Groups conserve old Weyerhaeuser tract on Newport River

The latest acquisition is adjacent to the Coastal Federation’s 215-acre McCotter Preserve, upstream from the Coastal Land Trust’s 530-acre Newport River Marsh Preserve and close to the Croatan National Forest. It’s the second phase of a conservation partnership among the Coastal Land Trust, the Coastal Federation and the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point to protect and restore land along the Newport River.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

The first phase, completed in 2023, protected 1,436 acres just downstream from this newest conservation project, officials said.

“This conservation success and our partnership with the Coastal Federation have been critical steps forward in connecting existing conservation lands and continuing our efforts to restore significant natural habitats,” Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks said.

The revised 2021-25 N.C. Oyster Restoration and Protection Plan, a collaborative restoration blueprint, ranks the Newport River as one of the most economically valuable and environmentally endangered oyster-growing estuaries in the state. Stormwater runoff is recognized as the largest source of coastal water quality impairment. The Coastal Federation plans to restore the natural hydrology and vegetation on portions of each protected property.

“Our close partnership with the Coastal Land Trust has provided important new opportunities for coastal restoration and conservation in North Carolina,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said. “By protecting and restoring these ecologically rich lands along the Newport River, we’re not just preserving habitat, we’re also improving the downstream water quality and fisheries of the Newport River for generations to come.”

The Coastal Land Trust cited retired N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission wildlife biologist David Allen, who said the estuarine marshes along the Newport River near the property likely hosts important habitat for many species of greatest conservation need as identified in the 2015 North Carolina Wildlife Action Plan, including diamondback terrapin, little blue heron, glossy ibis, snowy egret, tricolored heron, and American oystercatcher.

In addition, the combined 2,029 acres are militarily strategic, including transit route between U.S. Marine Corps New River Air Station and the Piney Island Bombing Target, or BT-11, and helicopter turf routes in Carteret County and a flight-holding pattern for Cherry Point.

“Conservation partnerships and projects like this one are important for both coastal resiliency and military training,” said Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Government and External Relations Carmen Lombardo of Marine Corps Installations East-Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. “We were pleased to provide Department of Defense funds toward both projects.”

Funding for the acquisition came from North Carolina Land and Water Fund, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service North American Wetlands Conservation Act Grant Program, Department of Defense Readiness and Environmental Integration Program, and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities Enviva Forest Conservation Fund.

North Carolina Division of Coastal Management officials are in the process of determining priority areas and strategies for the 2026-2030 cycle of the Section 309 Assessment and Strategy, and are asking for public input.

The assessment and strategy is a process to evaluate and enhance the effectiveness of a coastal management program using guidelines outlined in Section 309 of the Coastal Zone Management Act, and allows for additional funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The division is asking the public to complete its Section 309 Survey available online until Nov. 22.

The division works to protect, conserve and manage the state’s coastal resources through an integrated program of planning, permitting, education and research.

Every five years, coastal programs, like the division, carry out the self-assessments to identify priority issues and enhancement opportunities within nine topic areas, and assess the effectiveness of existing management efforts to address identified issues.

The nine topic areas are wetlands, coastal hazards, public access, marine debris, cumulative and secondary impacts, special area management planning, ocean resources, energy and government facility siting, and aquaculture.

“Stakeholder feedback is an important part of this process and we are looking for your input,” division officials said. “Your input is a key component of this assessment, and we appreciate your time in providing your responses.”

Division officials said they plan to welcome public comments on the draft assessment and strategy document, once it is complete.

Featured Image

A maze of creeks cuts through the salt marshes north of the Commissioner Jonathan Robinson Bridge and the gateway to Down East Carteret County. Photo: Dylan Ray

North Carolina environmental organizations are celebrating a recent decision in a coastal North Carolina man’s challenge to remaining federal wetland protections under the Clean Water Act.

The case is ongoing.

Robert White of Pasquotank County, who operates various businesses in area, brought the case in March, challenging what he contends are illegal provisions in Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rulings and seeking “to restore his own right to make use of his own land.” White seeks to operate a sand mine adjacent to Big Flatty Creek and near the Pasquotank River.

The Southern Environmental Law Center intervened in the case on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. Those nonprofit groups say White seeks to virtually eliminate federal protection of wetlands, after the U.S. Supreme Court nearly gutted existing protections last year in its Sackett v. EPA decision.

In January 2023, the EPA brought a civil enforcement action against White after he allegedly discharged pollutants into jurisdictional waters without a permit when he built and filled bulkheads in open water and wetlands, both marsh and forested, at his parcels on the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek. This enforcement action is ongoing. Last fall, White asked the court to stay an enforcement action pending against him. When that failed, White turned from defense to offense, as Boyle noted in his ruling.

White in April asked the court to preliminary enjoin federal agencies from enforcing Clean Water Act regulations as they pertain to him and his properties.

Related: Wildlife groups seek to intervene in Pasquotank man’s case

But Judge Terrence W. Boyle on June 17 issued a scathing decision for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina denying White’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

“White has failed to show that he is likely to succeed on the merits of either of his claims,” Boyle ruled.

“We are disappointed with the court’s ruling,” said Paige Gilliard, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing White in the case . “The Supreme Court was clear in Sackett that federal jurisdiction over wetlands requires both a continuous surface connection and indistinguishability from jurisdictional waters. The CWA regulates navigable waters, not land, so indistinguishability is a critical part of the Sackett test. The Amended Rule’s lip service to continuous surface connection is not enough under Sackett.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation represents challengers to environmental laws free of charge and “defends Americans’ liberties when threatened by government overreach and abuse,” according to its website.

White had alleged that the “adjacent” wetlands provision in the new federal rule is inconsistent with the Sackett test for jurisdiction over wetlands. He asked the court to find the new rule unlawful and set it aside as “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion.” White contended for those same reasons that the new regulations exceeded the agencies’ statutory authority and must be set aside.

Boyle ruled that White failed to show that he was likely to suffer irreparable harm without a preliminary injunction, “that the balance of the equities tip in his favor; and that an injunction would be in the public interest. Boyle called that failure “fatal to his motion.”

Boyle ruled that “White’s challenge to the waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule that resulted from the Sackett decision, “smacks up against the Rule’s fidelity to ‘waters of the United States’ and Sackett’s test to determine when an adjacent wetland meets that definition.”

White faltered, Boyle ruled, by isolating a phrase in the Sackett decision “from its logical connection to the remainder of the opinion.” Boyle referenced the words of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., applying his “familiar admonition to a different context: White is thinking words not things. The thing that makes a wetland practically indistinguishable from an adjacent ‘water of the United States’ is the presence of a continuous surface connection. Thus, the Amended Rule faithfully conforms to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ as interpreted by Sackett.”

Michael and Chantell Sackett, the people behind the case name, had purchased property in Idaho and began backfilling their lot so they could build a house. The EPA informed the Sacketts that their property included wetlands and they needed a permit because they were discharging pollutants into “waters of the United States.” The Sacketts sued, and after nearly 15 years their case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they prevailed.

In its 5-4 decision, the nation’s highest court ruled that “waters of the United States,” pertains to only wetlands that have “continuous surface connection.”

Advocates said the revised rule leaves water quality in North Carolina unprotected and increases the chance of flooding.

The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters said in May that White’s case “could finish killing off federal rules protecting wetlands.”

CHAPEL HILL — Environmental organizations are seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by a North Carolina commercial seafood business operator that they contend seeks to virtually eliminate remaining federal wetlands protections that were dramatically scaled back last year.

The Southern Environmental Law Center said Wednesday it had filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina a motion to intervene and memorandum in the case, which it says could strip provisions that protect waterways that support fishing, hunting and outdoor recreation and undermine their related economies. The law center is representing the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation.

The case was brought in March by Robert White of Pasquotank County. White is challenging what he contends are illegal provisions in Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rulings “to restore his own right to make use of his own land,” according to his attorneys, and to ensure both agencies comply with — and courts apply — the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that dramatically narrowed Clean Water Act protections.

Pacific Legal Foundation, which specializes in property rights cases, is representing White, who plans to operate a sand mine on river-adjacent land he owns. Pacific Legal said the Supreme Court’s decision requires that wetlands must be indistinguishable from navigable waters to be regulated. “Land such as Robert’s, which does not bear this connection to the two waterways — cannot be subject to federal regulation under the Clean Water Act.”

The nonprofit law firm known for property rights advocacy contends that the high court’s 5-4 majority opinion in Sackett v. EPA held that the Clean Water Act extends to only wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are “waters of the United States.” Pacific Legal lawyers had successfully represented Chantell and Mike Sackett in their dispute with the EPA.

“Last term in Sackett the Supreme Court made clear that the Clean Water Act forbids the type of wetlands regulation at issue in Mr. White’s case,” Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Charles Yates said in a statement in response to Coastal Review’s query. “That the Clean Water Act only authorizes the regulation of wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from covered waters, is beyond dispute. Yet rather than adhering to Sackett’s rule, the Agencies have doubled down and are transparently seeking to evade the judgment of the highest court in the land. All Mr. White seeks is a declaration that, per Sackett, the Agencies may no longer regulate his property. The interveners in this case are unsatisfied with the statute Congress actually passed and the Supreme Court’s ruling insisting that it means what it says; the proper audience for their complaints is the legislative branch.”

Pacific Legal said that White owns “low-lying,” flood-prone land on Big Flatty Creek and the Pasquotank River. Seeking to make improvements to minimize flooding and for business endeavors including agriculture and sand mining, White became engaged in permitting disputes with the EPA and the Corps regarding the “navigable waters” provision in the Clean Water Act.

He faces “crushing civil enforcement action,” according to Pacific Legal.

The Southern Environmental Law Center said the relief the plaintiff seeks would effectively write most wetlands out of the Clean Water Act.

“A ruling adopting this extreme view could have devastating effects on waters in North Carolina and throughout the nation,” said Mark Sabath, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Wetlands are vital to help protect drinking water supplies, wildlife and fisheries, and our communities from flooding. If the wetlands along our coastal waters like the Albemarle Sound are developed and destroyed, communities will be wrecked by job loss, wildlife loss, and flooding.”

The National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation say that the ruling stands to have large economic repercussions. They say healthy fish and wildlife depend on clean water, and that valuable waterways threatened by the lawsuit support fishing, hunting, and outdoor recreation, as well as the jobs these activities sustain. They contend that the clean water that hunters, anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts expect is a pillar in a $788 billion outdoor recreation industry.

“We care about the water quality and wetlands of North Carolina for both people and wildlife,” said Tim Gestwicki, CEO of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. “We cannot protect fisheries if the wetlands and streams flowing into estuaries are polluted or destroyed. We cannot ensure that critical wildlife habitat is preserved for fishing, hunting, birdwatching, and outdoor recreation if wetland protections are weakened.”

The groups say nearly all of the commercial catch and over half of the recreational harvest in the Southeast are fish and shellfish that depend on wetlands, and wetlands provide important flood protection for communities.

“What the plaintiff in this case is seeking could make it more difficult to protect wetlands and other waters that are critical to fish, waterfowl, shellfish, and other wildlife, and allow widespread destruction and degradation of those critically important waters along with pollution and flooding downstream,” said Jim Murphy, senior director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation. “Strong Clean Water Act protections safeguard critical wetlands and other waters that sustain our nation’s wildlife and people.” 

White is currently facing a separate federal enforcement action for building and filling a bulkhead on wetlands without a permit on his property on the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek. His attorney did not respond to questions pertaining to that case.

Gov. Roy Cooper has launched an ambitious initiative to conserve and restore wetlands that lost state protections last year when legislators passed a law that aligns with more narrowly defined federal wetland rules.

Cooper announced late Monday afternoon that he had signed Executive Order No. 305, which establishes a goal by 2040 to permanently conserve 1 million new acres of forests and wetlands, restore or reforest 1 million news acres of forests and wetlands, and plant 1 million trees in urban areas.

“North Carolina’s rich natural beauty is not only critical in our fight against flooding and climate change, but important to our economy,” Cooper stated in a release. “As our state continues to grow, we must be mindful to conserve and protect our natural resources and this historic Executive Order sets clear goals and puts a plan in place that will help us leave our state better than we found it for generations to come.”

Cooper last summer failed to stop the annual legislative exercise, the Farm Bill, which includes a provision that boxes in how the state can define and, ultimately, protect wetlands, from becoming law after North Carolina legislators overrode his veto of the bill.

Wording tucked into the North Carolina Farm Act of 2023 aligned how the state defines wetlands with that of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled last May that waters of the United States, or WOTUS, applies only to wetlands that have “continuous surface connection.”

Looking back: Digging into the Farm Act

The Farm Bill strips longtime state-enacted safeguards and compensatory mitigation for more than 2 million acres of wetlands unique to North Carolina like Carolina bays and pocosins, which have no inlet or outlet.

According to the order, pocosins cover a substantial portion of North Carolina, “offer extensive benefits through carbon storage and sequestration; enhance water quality through storage and filtration; contribute to biodiversity and ecological resilience and mitigate flood and fire risk that cause substantial economic cost.”

Looking back: Wetlands left unprotected

Under the order, state agencies are directed to avoid or curtail new projects that would harm these types of wetlands, including mountain bogs.

“The governor’s action today recognizes how vital wetlands are to North Carolina’s people and wildlife, fisheries and flood protection,” Mary Maclean Asbill, director of the North Carolina offices of the Southern Environmental Law Center, stated in a release. “North Carolina’s legislature set the wrong example by failing to protect our wetlands, increasing the risk of flooding to our communities and endangering North Carolinians and fisheries.”

The order also requires state agencies to study the social, economic and environmental value of protecting these and other types of wetlands and seek federal funding to protect and restore wetlands to minimize flooding, improve water quality and capture carbon.

Leaders of environmental organizations and state agency heads praised the order.

“Now more than ever, North Carolina needs to conserve our working lands—including wetlands and forests that reduce flooding, clean our drinking water, and sustain fish and wildlife,” Grady O’Brien, policy associate with North Carolina Conservation Network, said in a release. “We’re grateful for the robust commitment this executive order makes toward protecting natural resources and providing good stewardship of our state’s valuable lands.”

Katherine Skinner, executive director of The Nature Conservancy North Carolina Chapter, said efforts to protect and restore natural areas is “vital” for the state’s future.

“They ensure clean air, clean water, and recreational opportunities in a rapidly growing region,” she said in a release. “And, they are also crucial to our continued economic growth, most of which is centered on our natural resources.”

The state is experiencing more intense hurricanes, flooding, extreme temperatures, droughts, sea level rise and saltwater intrusion – all effects of climate change that have caused more than $250 billion in damages over the last few years, according to the executive order.

North Carolina has responded by investing millions in climate mitigation efforts, including the creation of the statewide Flood Resiliency Blueprint.

The goals and directives set in the order are derived in large part from the 2020 North Carolina Natural and Working Lands Action Plan, which was created with input from a group of nearly 100 expert stakeholders under the direction of the state Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ. The plan lays out specific actions the state may take to reduce the impacts of climate change.

Looking back: Interactive maps show benefits of natural, working lands

Katie Warnell, a senior policy associate at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, is part of the working group on natural and working lands.

“It is inspiring to see recommendations from the state’s Natural and Working Lands Action Plan being elevated as priorities in this executive order,” she stated in a release. “The order’s ambitious goals for land conservation and restoration will preserve and enhance the many benefits North Carolina’s natural and working lands provide to everyone who lives in or visits the state. The executive order also addresses many data gaps and limitations previously highlighted in the action plan, which hinder planning for the sustainable management of North Carolina’s lands and waters.”

The executive order also includes the following stipulations:

• A native plant policy for all future state-owned projects.
• Promotion and support from state agencies for new and ongoing conservation and restoration, and climate resiliency efforts within tribal communities.
• Research climate impacts on the state’s biodiversity.

“This Executive Order positions North Carolina to take a science-based approach to achieving mutually beneficial goals relating to environmental quality, economic development, resiliency, and ecosystem enhancement by identifying and protecting our forests and natural and working lands,” DEQ Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser stated in a release.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Nature Based Resiliency Coordinator Sara Ward said the goal set in the order is a “game-changing target.”

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is particularly excited about the emphasis on the state’s internationally significant peatlands, known as pocosins, in today’s action,” she said in a release.

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Executive Director Cameron Ingram called the order ambitious and important.

“Given all the tremendous pressures facing North Carolina’s lands and waters, we are excited to be a part of this ambitious and important initiative,” he said in a release. “We look forward to continuing to work with our State agency and non-profit partners to support the conservation of land to benefit wildlife and their habitats while providing opportunities for North Carolinians to enjoy hunting, fishing, boating, and wildlife associated recreation.”

When the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission meets this month, members are to hear recommendations concerning a new law to amend the state’s wetland rules.

The committees will meet from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 10. The full commission meeting is to start at 9 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 11. The public may attend the meeting in the Ground Floor Hearing Room of the Archdale Building in Raleigh in person or join the meeting by computer or phone.

In the 2023 North Carolina Farm Act, the commission was directed to amend the state’s wetland rules to be consistent with the federal “waters of the United States” or WOTUS, revised in 2023 because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that isolated wetlands are not protected under the Clean Water Act.

The agenda also includes a discussion on their case against the Rules Review Commission’s for “unlawful objection to EMC’s proposed rule amendments codifying its pre-existing narrative standards for the carcinogenic toxin 1,4-Dioxane,” and an update on the revision to a discharge permit from seafood packing and rinsing, aquatic animal operations, and similarly designated wastewaters for aquaculture.

Meeting information, including draft agendas and additional materials can be found on the commission website.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust this week transferred its 172-acre Brice’s Creek Nature Preserve in New Bern to Craven County.

The forested property along more than 1.5 miles of Brice’s Creek and an unnamed tributary and off County Line and Old Airport roads is to become a new public nature park.

“I think this gift of land from Coastal Land Trust is quite a Christmas present to the citizens of Craven County,” said Director of Land Protection Janice Allen. “Coastal Land Trust did what it does best and that is to conserve special parcels of land. Now Craven County Parks and Recreation is going to do what it does best and create a wonderful new public park on this special land.”

The Coastal Land Trust made the purchase in three phases using more than $1.5 million from the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, White River Marine Group, and North Carolina Community Foundation’s Richard Chapman Cleve Fund held by the Craven County Community Foundation.

Brice’s Creek Nature Preserve is made up of mature mixed pine-hardwood forest in the uplands and a diversity of wetlands, including bottomland hardwoods, cypress-gum swamp, and nonriverine wet hardwood forest.

“There is considerable local interest in opening up this park, and we are already on it,” said Craven County Parks and Recreation Director Billy Wilkes.

“We received a $500,000 grant from the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund to carry out our park plan and develop necessary infrastructure like a parking area, restroom, and trails. Construction can now begin in early 2024. Our plan is to have the park open to the public by spring of 2025. Stay tuned for news on park planning,” he added.

The Coastal Land Trust said each of the three portions of the riverfront property, which was once slated for development as part of the Carolina Colours golf and residential subdivision, was purchased at less than fair-market value.

“We greatly appreciate the willingness and generosity of Ken Kirkman of Overlook Holdings, LLC to sell these parcels of land to the Coastal Land Trust below market value especially given the location of the property in a rapidly developing section of New Bern,” stated Janice Allen.

The Brice’s Creek property will be Craven County’s second nature park. Latham-Whitehurst Nature Park was established in 2008 when the Coastal Land Trust purchased 133 acres along Upper Broad Creek and then transferred it to the county.

Guest commentary

In 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wilmington, North Carolina, taking 42 lives and costing more than $16 billion in estimated damage. Now, five years later, many residents and communities are still reeling from the storm’s floodwaters. Blue tarps remain on unpatched roofs, businesses have not returned and communities have experienced disproportionate recoveries. 

The immediate and residual impacts from hurricanes Florence and Matthew, Tropical Storm Fred and other subsequent unnamed flooding events have had long-lasting impacts on communities. As a result, these events have encouraged state leaders to take action to better prepare for future storms.

Environmental Defense Fund thanks leaders, as well as businesses, conservation groups and community members, for working to build a more flood-resilient North Carolina. Let’s look at how far we’ve come in the last five years. 

Leaders develop Flood Resiliency Blueprint 

Working in collaboration with state agencies, local governments and nongovernmental organizations, Sen. Jim Perry, R-Lenoir, and Rep. John Bell, R-Wayne, led the authorization of the state’s first Flood Resiliency Blueprint. 

The blueprint will be used as a support tool to guide statewide decisions around resilience and is informed by advanced hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, which demonstrates how much water is flowing and where that water goes during a flood. Ultimately, this information will help guide investment of local, state and federal resilience funding toward cost-effective solutions to reduce flood vulnerability. 

The Flood Resiliency Blueprint will also provide accurate and timely information on flood risks and effective solutions for communities and landowners. This will help guide local efforts to manage and abate flooding within watersheds and river basins and help communities manage risks beyond traditional jurisdictional boundaries. In addition, it helps ensure funding is locally supported and regionally effective. 

Lawmakers expand funding for natural infrastructure

After Hurricane Florence, North Carolina’s state legislature appropriated more than $300 million toward flood mitigation efforts. Included was support to advance natural infrastructure projects and stream improvement efforts through programs at the state’s Department of Agriculture, Department of Cultural and Natural Resources (DCNR) and Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). 

The Stoney Creek effort is one example where DEQ’s Division of Mitigation Services has engaged private-sector environmental restoration firms to work with landowners and the town of Goldsboro. They have developed a watershed-scale approach to regional flooding using natural infrastructure projects, such as enhancing and restoring wetlands to store storm water and incorporating natural berms or in-ditch structures to slow the flow of storm water. 

Part of the $300 million also went to the DCNR’s Land and Water Fund to advance 17 proposals to implement natural infrastructure projects and to support the planning and construction of additional flood mitigation projects. 

Experts advance research 

State legislators and agency leaders have also advanced new studies through the University of North Carolina Collaboratory and state agencies to research the benefits of flood mitigation solutions and develop new datasets to inform the Flood Resiliency Blueprint and community solutions. 

For example, Dr. Barbara Doll from North Carolina State University led a 15-person research team to explore natural infrastructure solutions in the Neuse River Basin. The study found potential flood reductions of up to 45% in areas of high natural infrastructure adoption.

While Dr. Miyuki Hino from the University of North Carolina collaborated with colleagues and graduate students to examine floodplain management. Through her research, she found that for every building removed from the state’s floodplains, 10 new structures were built, raising concerns that floodplain buyouts are not keeping pace with new development. 

A look toward the road ahead 

Overall, these initiatives have been instrumental in helping North Carolina better prepare for the ongoing and growing threat of flooding and storm risk. We thank North Carolina leaders and collaborators for their recent efforts and ongoing commitment to address flooding. 

But even with this advancement, experts agree that many flood challenges still lie ahead. For instance, due to the Environmental Protection Agency v. Sackett ruling, millions of acres of North Carolina wetlands are now unprotected, leaving communities at risk of losing valuable, flood-reducing ecosystems. This Supreme Court decision shifts responsibility for the conservation and management of certain wetlands from federal agencies to the states. Whether and how North Carolina policymakers address the potential loss of wetlands, in addition to how much development occurs in the state’s floodplains, will significantly impact the story that is told after future storms. 

We call on leaders to prioritize state-level coordination and increase local capacity to identify and implement watershed-scale solutions, recognizing that flood solutions can’t be developed within traditional jurisdictional or landowner boundaries.

We also encourage leaders to ensure protection of wetlands and other natural flood defenses to enable communities, landowners and all North Carolinians to better prepare for and quickly recover from the next flood or storm.

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Second of two parts. Read part 1.

The final rule ending federal protections for isolated wetlands that the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army issued last week is another setback in the more than 40-year battle to protect North Carolina’s water quality.

Issued Aug. 29, the amendment to the final “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’” rule published in the Federal Register in January reflects the Supreme Court’s May 25, 2023, Sackett v. EPA decision that only wetlands with a “continuous surface connection” to waterbodies are considered “waters of the United States.”

The two agencies enforce the Clean Water Act put in place in 1972 that prohibits the discharge of pollutants from a point source into “navigable waters,” or those defined as waters of the United States, or WOTUS.

The amended rule, coupled with the North Carolina Farm Act passed June 27 that aligns the state definition of wetlands to the federal definition, opens up 2.5 million acres of isolated wetlands to being developed, according to an estimate provided earlier this year by the state.

A Department of Environmental Quality representative told Coastal Review Friday that the agency was still “reviewing the final rule released by EPA this week and is unable to provide a specific estimate of wetlands impacted based on the rule change.”

With these two rule changes, North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Todd Miller said to expect “a mess and a real threat to the health of our coastal estuaries that support the marine fisheries of North Carolina.

“We can also expect to see more closures of waters for swimming,” Miller said.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Derb Carter Jr. echoed Miller’s concern.

“The state estimates that up to 60% of the wetlands in the state will no longer be protected or regulated under the Clean Water Act,” Carter told Coastal Review. “I don’t think the public is quite aware of the scope of this and its potential impact on wetlands, on water quality and on the natural heritage of the state.”

Carter said the Sackett case that began in the late 2000s happened when the EPA told the Idaho couple, who had begun to backfill their property adjacent to a lake to prepare for construction, that they needed a permit. “They weren’t told they can’t do it. They were told they needed a permit. Instead, it became a challenge to whether Congress can regulate wetlands at all under the Clean Water Act,” he said.

The Sackett case would not be as big of a concern in North Carolina, Carter explained, “because the state program had been in place to backstop the federal program and ensure at the end of the day, that all the wetlands are protected.”

But the 2023 Farm Act changed that.

Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill June 23, because of the provision “severely weakens protection for wetlands” which will lead to “more severe flooding for homes, roads and businesses and dirtier water for our people, particularly in eastern North Carolina,” he said in a statement at the time. The provision coupled “with the drastic weakening of federal rules caused by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Sackett case, leaves approximately 2.5 million acres, or about one half of our state’s wetlands, unprotected.”

The legislature overrode the veto.

Carter continued, “Literally in one sentence this General Assembly at the behest some special interest in the legislature summarily repealed all of that, so there is no backstop supplementary protection for wetlands that are no longer regulated under the federal Clean Water Act after the Sackett decision.”

Going forward, the Farm Act says the only wetlands that are protected by state law are those that are determined to be protected at the federal level, under the Clean Water Act, after the Sackett decision.

Early days of wetlands advocacy

Miller told Coastal Review that the nonprofit he founded became active in this type of conservation because wetland drainage in the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula had led to a federally funded proposal in 1982 to strip mine 120,000 of peat lands to make methanol. The land would have been reclaimed as farmland. 

“The commercial fishermen in Pamlico Sound witnessed the direct harm the drainage was doing to the estuary, and were crying out for help, having sent a petition from Hyde County to Raleigh with over 3,000 signatures about the harm the drainage was already doing, without this new project,” Miller explained. “We got involved in that project as one of the first things the Federation ever did, thus our bumper sticker:  No Wetland, No Seafood.”

Carter, who had worked alongside Miller while representing the National Wildlife Federation to stop the wetlands project, said that these pocosins on the Albermarle-Pamlico peninsula were not considered wetlands and would be opened up to peat mining then converted to agriculture.

“Coastal Federation volunteers worked with residents out there to help them understand this was a big decision that could have a lot of impact on commercial fishing, fisheries, and recreational fishing — that’s a big part of the economy out there — but we’re literally talking about tens of thousands of acres of wetlands that were proposed to be converted into agriculture with drainage into the estuaries of Pamlico Sound,” Carter said, adding they represented the case.

Historian David Cecelski, the Coastal Federation’s first volunteer, was on the ground, spending just shy of a year living in Swan Quarter spreading the word in mostly fishing communities about the consequences of the strip-mining project that was going to cover parts of the Dare, Beaufort, Hyde, Washington and Tyrrell counties.

During that time, he said he was welcomed by the community and took an interest in its history.

“Even to understand how to build bridges amongst people like between the Coastal Federation and those African American communities, I always felt like you had to dig deeper. You had to know the story of those communities,” he said.

Miller said that the Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes national wildlife refuges protect more than 100,000 acres.

He continued that in the time since, the Coastal Federation has invested heavily in buying lands that should be wet, and restoring their hydrology, including the North River Wetlands Preserve where alone nearly 5,000 acres were restored, and has been directly involved in restoring around 20,000 acres of wetlands with its partners.

Federal, state laws over the decades

Miller said that since the early 1980s, both federal and state laws and rules have progressively gotten stronger and more consistent, with some back-and-forth, but nothing overly dramatic.

“Enforcement of those laws and rules has always been a challenge, and a shortcoming to the effectiveness of the standards that are written in laws and rules. The current rollback at the federal and state levels means that we are back to where we started before the peat mining proposal — large wet areas of coastal North Carolina are no longer protected,” he said.  

The Coastal Federation advocates that wetlands are critical not only as habitat, but also to maintain water quality and the productivity and health of coastal estuaries. 

“When you alter hydrology and drain runoff off, the land that would normally have infiltrated and soaked into the ground, you change water quality and make our coastal waters unsafe for shellfish harvest and swimming. That runoff, even when not mixed with human development or sewage, contains high levels of harmful bacteria, nutrients, and sediment,” he said.

With wetlands protections, the most important time related to state regulations was in the early 2000s, Carter said. Also noting that there’s an interplay between federal and state laws.

From shortly after the Clean Water Act was enacted until 2000, the Corps of Engineers issued permits and the state issued water quality certifications, both under the act.

Carter said that was not without controversy. In 1985, the Supreme Court in a lawsuit unanimously decided that the EPA and the Corps had properly determined that wetlands are regulated under the Clean Water Act. Then, in 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision against the Corps’ addition to the wetlands definition that any wetland used by migratory birds is regulated under the Clean Water Act.

“The court said just the use of migratory birds of otherwise isolated wetlands that aren’t connected to any other waters is not enough to regulate activities on those wetlands under the federal Clean Water Act,” Carter said.

This prompted a response by the Environmental Management Commission.

The late Dr. Pete Peterson at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences based on Morehead City was serving as chair of the commission’s Water Quality Committee. He was concerned that nobody knew the scope of wetlands that may no longer be protected. The commission initiated an effort to continue state protection of those wetlands.

The commission reached out to the attorney general to see if the state law at the time clearly encompassed protecting wetlands. The attorney general issued a formal opinion stating that when the General Assembly enacted the State Water Quality law in 1974, the definition of waters of the state regulated under that law was broad and encompassed wetlands.

“This is noteworthy. I keep trying to emphasize this to people, the attorney general also pointed out that the state constitution that the people amended in 1972 — and it’s still in the state constitution — says explicitly that it is the policy of the state and the will of the people in amending the constitution to protect wetlands in the state. The state has an explicit constitutional provision enacted by the people saying it’s the policy of the state to protect our wetlands by name,” Carter said.

The commission then enacted state regulations and established a state permitting system for those wetlands that were not under federal protection. These were challenged by the North Carolina Home Builders Association, which filed a lawsuit in state court contending that state law does not allow the commission to regulate wetlands.

“We intervened in that case. I represented the Coastal Federation and other organizations intervening on the side of the state to help defend those regulations and the EMC’s authority,” Carter said. The state Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the state’s authority to regulate wetlands as waters of the state.

Another decision by the Supreme Court in 2006 set up what became a new rule to assess wetlands that had been the policy up until the Sackett decision earlier this year.

“That was the genesis of the state regulations,” he said. “Now you have two things that happened in 2023. You have a much more political Supreme Court that’s willing to write its own definition of wetlands and, in my view, ignore what Congress actually intended to do in the Clean Water Act when it ruled in the Sackett case.”

With the longstanding state law based on the state constitution, the initial enactment of the Clean Water Act in the early 1970s, the attorney general’s opinion that the commission had authority in 2001, and the North Carolina Court of Appeals decision in 2002, the state had full authority to regulate wetlands, Carter said.

The Farm Act of 2023 ignores the will of the people, “And instead, responded to special interests in removing any state wetland protection beyond what the federal government provides, and they did it in ignorance,” he said. “They have no idea how many wetlands are now going to be at risk for loss and they have no idea what the impact of that is going to be on the state’s wetlands, the state’s water quality, all those things that rely on wetlands from fishery resources to avoiding downstream flooding. It is completely irresponsible and ignores the will of the people.”

First of two parts.

The lawsuit an Idaho couple filed in 2008 against the Environmental Protection Agency arguing that wetlands on their property were not protected under “waters of the United States” has resulted in federal protections being stripped from millions of acres of isolated wetlands.

The EPA and Department of the Army, which oversees the Corps of Engineers, issued Tuesday their final rule amending the “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’” published Jan. 18, 2023. The EPA and Corps enforce the Clean Water Act, which prohibits the discharge of pollutants from a point source into “navigable waters,” defined as waters of the United States, or WOTUS. 

The amended definition conforms to the Supreme Court’s May 25, 2023, decision on the Sackett v. EPA case that the Clean Water Act “extends to only those wetlands with a ‘continuous surface connection’ to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right,” and “the wetlands on the Sacketts’ property are distinguishable from any possibly covered waters,” Justice Samuel Alito writes in the opinion. 

“While I am disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Sackett case, EPA and Army have an obligation to apply this decision alongside our state co-regulators, Tribes, and partners,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in a statement.  “We’ve moved quickly to finalize amendments to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ to provide a clear path forward that adheres to the Supreme Court’s ruling.”

A public webinar on the new definition is scheduled for 3 p.m. Sept. 12. Register on the EPA’s webpage for the amendments rule. The agencies also plan to host listening sessions this fall.

In 2007, after learning that the couple was backfilling the lot in preparation to build, the EPA ordered the Sacketts to restore their property by Priest Lake, Idaho, or pay $40,000 a day in fines. The EPA said the lot contained wetlands and backfilling violated the Clean Water Act. The EPA classified the wetlands on the Sacketts’ lot as waters of the United States because they were near a ditch that fed into a creek, which fed into Priest Lake, a navigable, intrastate lake. 

The Sacketts sued. 

“We have worked with EPA to expeditiously develop a rule to incorporate changes required as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett,” said Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Michael L. Connor. “With this final rule, the Corps can resume issuing approved jurisdictional determinations that were paused in light of the Sackett decision. Moving forward, the Corps will continue to protect and restore the nation’s waters in support of jobs and healthy communities.”

Issuing the amended final rule on WOTUS comes just two months after the North Carolina General Assembly approved, Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed and then the legislature overrode that veto of the North Carolina Farm Act of 2023, which changed the state’s definition of wetlands to align with the federal definition.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality staff members estimate that, as a result of both the Supreme Court decision and Farm Act, around 2.5 million acres of wetlands will be unprotected. That’s nearly half of the wetlands in the state and more than 7% of the state’s total landmass. 

Few satisfied with new rule

The final amended rule has met pushback from different interests and for different reasons. 

Environmental groups worry that the final rule, when considered with the North Carolina Farm Act, leaves critical waters in North Carolina unprotected and will increase the chance of flooding. Homebuilders worry that the final rule leaves too much room for uncertainty and government overreach. 

“While this new wetland definition is in keeping with the requirements of the Supreme Court ruling on the Clean Water Act, it’s a serious blow to our ability to protect water quality and prevent flooding on the North Carolina coast,” North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Todd Miller told Coastal Review Wednesday. “It eliminates many forested wetlands, pocosins, and inland swamps from both federal and state protection. The outcome will be less fish to catch, more illnesses due to exposure to polluted waters, more public health swimming advisories, and more costly property damage from floods.” 

Miller cited Supreme Court Justice Brent Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion, which Miller said mirrored the Coastal Federation’s concerns: “He said, ‘By narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.’”

Sound Rivers Executive Director Heather Deck said Tuesday that, as the state prepares for yet another extreme weather event with potential flooding and the Neuse River is suffering from a significant fish kill, “it is imperative that our legislature reverses course and restores protections for our wetlands and waters.”

Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette told Coastal Review that the EPA’s rule will have serious consequences for water quality and communities throughout the Cape Fear Basin. 

“The Cape Fear is the state’s largest and most diverse watershed and the drinking water source for one in five North Carolinians. It’s also home to the highest concentration of hog and chicken farms in the state, and North Carolina’s most industrialized river,” he said. “Gutting the Waters of the U.S. rule will mean more toxic chemicals and more animal waste in drinking water, more wetlands lost forever and more short-sighted development. In short, more polluter profits over people and the environment.”

Rick Savage, executive director with the Carolina Wetlands Association, said that the Supreme Court has eliminated years of wetland protection under the Clean Water Act and North Carolina could have continued to protect these wetlands, “however the recently passed Farm Bill eliminates that protection,” he said. “We need to brace ourselves for a lot of wetlands no longer being protected and they are the very resource we need to protect our communities from flooding. Expect more communities getting flooded, less clean water, and reduced community resilience.”

North Carolina Conservation Network Policy Director Grady McCallie told Coastal Review that the EPA rule, “does no more and no less than what the US Supreme Court’s Sackett decision requires. Unfortunately, that decision – unwisely echoed in state law by the NC General Assembly in June – stripped protection from over half of North Carolina’s wetlands. State legislators who care about preventing flooding need to re-establish protections for the wetlands that protect our communities.”

Kelly Moser, senior attorney and leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Water Program, said in a statement that the final rule mirrors the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in the Sackett case, “which overturned decades of law and practice and put the safety of our communities and waters at risk. The rule, like the Sackett decision itself, severely restricts the federal government’s ability to protect critical waters including wetlands that shield communities from damaging floods and pollution.”

The homebuilder organizations have different complaints about the amended final rule.

The National Association of Home Builders stated in a news release that the final definition of WOTUS “relies on a fatally flawed version of the 2023 Revised Definition of WOTUS” and that rather than making necessary changes and improvements to the rule, “the EPA and Army Corps did the bare minimum and struck the most egregious and unlawful parts of it.”

They say the 2023 amended rule “doubles down on bad policy and vague terms,” which allows “for continued government overreach.”

Association Chairman Alicia Huey in a statement Tuesday said that the amended rule is a “blow to housing affordability and assures continued uncertainty regarding federal jurisdiction as established by the Supreme Court’s recent Sackett decision that made clear the federal government only has authority over relatively permanent waterbodies.”

She continued that the rule “sets the stage for continued federal overreach, bureaucratic delays during the wetlands permitting process, and regulatory confusion for home builders and land developers,” and will be a barrier to produce new affordable housing.

Associated Builders and Contractors Vice President of Regulatory, Labor and State Affairs Ben Brubeck said in a statement Tuesday that these revisions fail to fully implement the Sackett v. EPA ruling, “which placed clear boundaries on the scope of the federal government’s authority while maintaining reasonable environmental protections for America’s waterways. Instead, this rule, issued without meaningful opportunities for input from the construction industry and other stakeholders, will contribute to continued regulatory uncertainty and unnecessary delays for critical infrastructure projects across the nation.”

Reprinted from Carteret County News-Times

OCEAN — The North Carolina Coastal Federation this month received a $1.6 million grant from the North Carolina Land and Water Fund Flood Risk Reduction Program to design and implement the restoration of 1,100 acres of ditched and drained timberland to wetlands within the Newport River watershed.

Located east of Newport and north of Morehead City, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust recently purchased the 1,400 acres that are adjacent to the Croatan National Forest.

The land will be transferred to the nonprofit Coastal Federation later this year. The tract includes 1,100 acres of timberland and 300 acres of high-quality wetland habitat. It had been owned by Weyerhaeuser, the timber and paper company.

The restoration will include blocking the flow from the drainage ditches to decrease the amount of water moving to the river during a storm. The project also will restore the floodplain area along the tributary running through the center of the property to allow for floodwater storage.

Once the work is complete, according to Coastal Federation founder and Executive Director Todd Miller, it’s estimated that the property should be able to retain approximately 165 million gallons of runoff during a large storm, significantly reducing the volume and flow of polluted runoff entering the Newport River following each heavy rain.

The North Carolina Land and Water Fund was appropriated $15 million in the North Carolina 2021-22 state budget for projects that protect and restore floodplains and wetlands for the purpose of storing water, reducing flooding improving water quality providing wildlife and aquatic habitat and providing recreational opportunities.

The federation has done similar, even larger projects, before. In December 2022, after more than 20 years of planning and work, the nonprofit announced it had completed restoration work that transformed North River Farms in Down East Carteret County into a wetlands preserve.

The 6,000-acre restoration project was among the largest of its kind in the nation.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust last year was awarded a $1.65 million state grant from the North Carolina Land and Water Trust Fund to help pay for the purchase and preservation of the property.

The land includes about 4 miles of frontage along the river and Little Creek, according to Janice Allen, the trust’s director of land protection. It has a rare coastal estuarine fringe forest, and it’s across the river from property the trust already owns.

There are loblolly pine trees and maritime oaks, and the marsh is in good shape, Allen said last year.

Allen said Monday the land trust has bought the property with the grant from the Land and Water Trust Fund and another from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, plus some loans, which need to be paid back before the property can be transferred to the federation.

“We’re working on it,” she said, and “hopefully” it will happen soon.

The N.C. Land and Water Fund, formerly known as the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund, gets money from the state budget, and since its creation in 1996 by the state General Assembly, has conserved well over one-half million acres and protected or restored 3,000 miles of streams and rivers.

At the time the land trust announced its grant in October 2022, a news release said the trust would likely turn the property over to the N.C. Coastal Federation.

The N.C. Coastal Land Trust is headquartered in Wilmington. It conserves lands with scenic, recreational, historic and/or ecological value. The mission of the organization, which is supported by grants and donations, is to “enrich the coastal communities of our state through conservation of natural areas and working landscapes, education and the promotion of good land stewardship.”

Since its inception in 1992, it has protected more than 85,000 acres in the state’s 31 eastern counties, including Carteret.

This story is provided courtesy of the Carteret County News-Times, a twice-weekly newspaper published in Morehead City. Coastal Review partners with the News-Times to provide our readers with news of the North Carolina coast.

Now that the North Carolina Farm Act of 2023 has become law, its opponents say about 2.5 million acres of the state’s wetlands are vulnerable to development.

The Senate voted 29-17 Monday evening and the House voted 78-40 Tuesday afternoon to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of Senate Bill 582, “An Act to Make Various Changes to The Agricultural and Wastewater Laws of This State,” commonly called North Carolina Farm Act of 2023.

Both votes essentially were down party lines, but six House Democrats voted in favor of the override.

Cooper vetoed the bill Friday citing a provision in the bill “that severely weakens protections for wetlands means more severe flooding for homes, roads and businesses, and dirtier water for our people, particularly in North Carolina.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, and Sen. Buck Newton, R-Wayne, introduced the bill with the provision to “Clarify Definition of Wetlands,” which restricts wetlands that the state can regulate to those considered “waters of the United States,” often called WOTUS, and specifies that wetlands do not include prior converted cropland, consistent with the existing rule.

The Environmental Protection Agency, because of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the case of Sackett v. EPA, is defining “waters of the United States” to be consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision that the Clean Water Act only extends to “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right.”

The ruling and now the veto override make isolated wetlands outside of both state and federal jurisdictions.

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, during floor debate Tuesday, urged her fellow representatives to let the veto stand because of the wetlands provision that Cooper had cited.

Harrison noted that agriculture was exempt from wetlands regulation under the measure, so the provision doesn’t affect the agriculture industry. “This is about the ability to fill in and develop wetlands that play a very important role and are protecting our water quality and preventing flooding.”

The exemption states that wetlands do not include prior converted cropland as defined in the National Food Security Act Manual.

Harrison said that the U.S. Supreme Court decision left it up to the states to protect wetlands. After the Sackett decision, Tennessee and South Carolina looked at their wetland protections to make sure that they’re filling the void created by the Supreme Court decision.

“I want to remind you what the implications are going to be for our state,” Harrison continued, adding that the state is facing increasing numbers of high-energy storms, and the flooding in eastern North Carolina has been tremendous.

“Wetlands provide a very important role for flood resiliency. They can slow down water, something like a million gallons per acre. They also filter for water quality for those of you who care about clean drinking water, and they also provide wildlife habitat for those of you who like to fish and hunt,” Harrison said. “So wetlands play a very important role and our state and the function of our state.”

If the veto is overridden, “we’re going lose 2.5 million acres of wetlands to vulnerability for development because they will no longer have the protection that they had before and that’s 7% of the landmass of the state. A significant portion of that — 800,000 (acres) — are actually in the Cape Fear and Neuse River basins alone. We are looking at significant impact.”

Rep. Deb Butler, D-New Hanover, said that these wetlands are magic and they do the work themselves if they’re left alone. “This approach that we use feel so schizophrenic. On the one hand we do great work and on the other hand, we shoot our own foot off,” she said before the override vote.

Monday evening, after the Senate voted to override the veto, Jackson, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Energy, and Environment Committee and primary sponsor of the bill, said in a statement, “North Carolina’s farmers work day-in and day-out to make sure we all have enough food to feed our families, and it’s a shame that after originally supporting the North Carolina Farm Act of 2023, several Democrats turned their backs on farmers. This year’s Farm Act is good legislation that will help our farmers, growers, producers, and distributors. I appreciate my Republican colleagues for standing strong to override the governor’s ill-advised veto and supporting North Carolina agriculture.”

Gov. Roy Cooper on Friday vetoed recently passed legislation that he said would undo protections for half of the state’s wetlands.

Language in Senate Bill 582, the 2023 Farm Act, would restrict the wetlands that the state can regulate to those that are considered waters of the United States, often called WOTUS. This means that the state would no longer have the authority to protect federally nonjurisdictional, or isolated, wetlands.

“The provision in this bill that severely weakens protection for wetlands means more severe flooding for homes, roads and businesses and dirtier water for our people, particularly in eastern North Carolina,” Cooper said in a statement.

“This provision coupled with the drastic weakening of federal rules caused by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Sackett case, leaves approximately 2.5 million acres, or about one half of our state’s wetlands, unprotected,” he continued. “The General Assembly has allocated tens of millions of dollars to protect the state from flooding and my administration is working to stop pollution like PFAS and other contaminants. This bill reverses our progress and leaves the state vulnerable without vital flood mitigation and water purification tools.”

Related: Bill limiting NC wetland protections sent to Gov. Cooper

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, in a memo Thursday, said that based on preliminary analysis and data, a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision combined with Section 15 of the bill could result in loss of wetland protections for an area that’s more than 7% of the state’s total landmass.

Based on data from a 1990s analysis, DEQ researchers put areas such as pocosin, maritime forests, managed pinelands and pine and hardwood flats at high risk of losing the protections if the Farm Bill were to be enacted.

The estimates were qualified based on the age of the data, DEQ noted. “Some of these wetlands may no longer exist or may no longer be protected under existing state law. The estimate also does not include wetlands smaller than an acre.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Derb Carter applauded the veto and sent a letter to Cooper. 

“Our wetlands have incredible value with the ability to retain flood waters, filter pollution, replenish groundwater that most of our citizens rely on for drinking water, and provide habitat to fish and wildlife,” Carter said in a statement, adding that he couldn’t think of another single action taken during his 40-year career that would have “a greater long-term adverse impact on North Carolina’s water quality and natural resources than abandoning state wetlands protections — harm that will be made even worse by the loss of federal protections from the recent Supreme Court decision in Sackett v. EPA. From our unique mountain bogs to namesake Carolina Bays, bottomland swamps, and unique pocosins, our wetlands are a state natural treasure.”

A veto-override is expected unless a Republican can be persuaded otherwise.

Cooper also on Friday signed into law numerous other bills. One with potential environmental implications was Senate Bill 673. The Wastewater Regulatory Relief Act sets requirements for sewer line extension permitting, including engineering evaluations of projected needs. It features a provision that allows counties with projected yearly population growth above 2% to allocate wastewater treatment  system capacity beyond the system’s design as long as a contract to expand the plant is signed or ongoing expansion is to be complete within prescribed time periods.

Senate Bill 22 renames the Outdoor Heritage Advisory Council to the North Carolina Youth Outdoor Engagement Commission. The commission is under the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission for organizational and budgetary purposes only and advises state agencies and the General Assembly “on the promotion of outdoor recreational activities, including, but not limited to, hiking, horseback riding, boating, sport shooting and archery, bird watching and wildlife watching, camping, swimming, hunting, trapping, and fishing in order to preserve North Carolina’s outdoor heritage for future  generations and  use grants and programming to promote the outdoor recreational activities …” according to the measure.

Cooper’s office said the governor declined to sign into law House Bill 130, which among other things sets requirements for decommissioning and site restoration for utility-scale solar projects, including financial assurances. But the measure also bars counties from adopting ordinances that limit “energy choice,” such as those that prohibit connections to certain energy sources or against the sale or installation of appliances such as gas stoves.

If a Raleigh-area volunteer effort to help fill the gaps in wetlands data continues its current path, the monitoring program could expand across the state.

The Carolina Wetlands Association, North Carolina State University and RTI International have been developing the pilot wetlands monitoring program over the past few years.

Michael R. Burchell, professor and extension specialist with N.C. State’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, recently explained to Coastal Review that the project that’s funded through the Environmental Protection Agency’s wetlands program development grant was designed to see how viable it is for volunteers to collect wetland data.

The pilot program was awarded funding four years ago, right before COVID-19 restrictions were put into place. During the last year, Burchell said the team has been able to move forward with the project.

When Burchell presented the project on behalf of the team during the N.C. Water Resources Research Institute’s annual conference at N.C. State University’s McKimmon Center in Raleigh earlier this year, he explained that a benefit of a sustained ambient monitoring program is understanding the health and promoting protection of wetlands are critical to preserving our ecosystems.

“Monitoring and having some sort of ambient monitoring program could be really important to track wetland loss impairment. Wetlands can serve almost as a canary in the coal mine. If you know what the quality of the water coming into a wetland is, you get some ideas about what’s going on your watershed, hopefully, before it starts impacting your stream and other surface water quality,” Burchell said during the conference. But these programs are hard to fund, and a volunteer science program may be the answer because the project could be sustained in the long term with limited financial support.

Burchell told Coastal Review that the project came about after years of funding challenges made it hard for the state to maintain wetland monitoring.

Partners for the project, which includes Carolina Wetlands Association Executive Director Rick Savage, began pursuing the idea. In the process, they found that there’s not many volunteer-based wetlands monitoring programs.

“It’s not the norm at all,” Savage told Coastal Review, normally volunteers monitor streams or rivers, not wetlands. Burchell added that this is because wetlands are more complicated to monitor. 

Burchell said the partnership with the Carolina Wetlands Association allowed for the volunteer program to build on the association’s established goal, and give the program presence on the association’s existing website. The program page includes the training for volunteers that the team developed, which covers basic safety, field work, data-collection software, and other resources.

Work also went into recruiting volunteers through the association’s online presence and network. Savage said they have about 40 volunteers now, in some capacity, ranging in age and experience.

Between February 2022 and March of this year, there have been five monitoring events. The groups of up to 10 volunteers have collected data on hydrology, water chemistry, soils, vegetation and wildlife at Mason Farm Biological Reserve in Chapel Hill, Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve in Cary, and Robertson Millpond Preserve in Wendell.

“Right now, the pilot appears successful. We’ve only done this one year, but it certainly seems to be gaining momentum,” Burchell said at the conference.

Burchell explained to Coastal Review that they tell the volunteers that this kind of project hasn’t really been done before and they are always looking for feedback on what works and what doesn’t, or if things should be done differently.

“Ultimately we want to be reporting about what went right, what didn’t go right, what we did to fix it, and where we think that it could go in the future,” Burchell said.

Savage added that they’ve “been pretty happy with the way it’s been going. We’ve learned a lot and we’ve made adjustments accordingly, and we still are to some extent.”

Burchell said that they chose the Raleigh-area wetlands because of logistics. These sites are close to the university and the Carolina Wetlands Association headquarters, and are diverse, high-quality wetlands that are under some management as part of a conservation site.

“We want the data to actually be used by other wetland managers — whether it’s people in DEQ or the Coastal Federation — looking at doing a conservation easement. Or if they want to know what the hydrology of a similar wetland might be, they could use this data,” Burchell said. Or “perhaps people who are in the restoration industry are curious about what they would expect the water quality to be from one of these areas.”

Currently, they’re still in the data-collection stage, and the data sharing part of the project is under development.

Savage said the next important phase that’s probably going to get the most emphasis is getting the data portal set up, most likely on the association’s website. RTI International is developing the data portal as its part of the partnership.

The partners plan on applying to the EPA soon for funds to continue the project “but expansion has got to be the key word there,” Savage said.

In addition to the training and materials that have been and will need to be created, Savage said as the project expands, the team is looking for organizations to help with the volunteers.

The Carolina Wetlands Association will be the lead for the program and would provide training to organizations and volunteers, Savage said, but “ultimately, it’ll be the organization that manages the volunteers.”

This means making sure the volunteers collect data from the sites at the right times of year, complete certain tasks and collect the necessary data.

“I think that’s going to be a really important aspect,” to expand the program to reach the long-term goal of a self-sustaining wetlands monitoring program across North and South Carolina, Savage said. It would be overwhelming to manage all the potential volunteers. “We’re going to need organizations to work with us to manage the volunteers.”

Savage added that the organizations would be encouraged to engage their volunteers year-round.

“That’s probably as important as anything,” he said, explaining that outreach may be easier for these existing organizations. This the project team’s first time with this kind of work, and while “I think we’re doing OK” at keeping the volunteers excited and engaged, “we can always learn.”

Savage said they’ve had a couple of organizations already contact them to get involved, but the program is not quite set up for that step, yet.

‘I think this is exciting. It means, I think, that we’re doing something right and we’re getting other organizations interested,” Savage said. The goal is to reach out to these organizations and include them in this network as soon as possible, but most likely during the next funding cycle. “I’m really pretty excited to see how we get expanded out and work with these organizations.”

A hope is that with the next phase, there are volunteers from under-represented populations and groups from communities with wetlands, Burchell added.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday against the Environmental Protection Agency in a longstanding case that will narrow what defines a wetland.

In its decision, the nation’s highest court ruled that the definition, “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, applies only to wetlands that have “continuous surface connection.”

The ruling ends a more-than-15-year battle brought on by Idaho couple Michael and Chantell Sackett, who were ordered by the EPA to restore land they had backfilled on their lot to build a home.

EPA officials at the time notified the Sacketts that they were in violation of the Clean Water Act because wetlands on the property were near a ditch, which feeds into a creek that runs into Priest Lake.

The Sacketts sued, initiating a case that ultimately challenged the legality of the testing method used for determining wetlands as “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act.

The court’s ruling Thursday is hailed as a victory for property owners, but environmentalists have argued such a decision will have far-reaching implications for wetlands protections.

“In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA, the only thing now protecting many North Carolina communities from being flooded in the coming years is the state’s existing ban on paving over wetlands without a permit. The NC General Assembly should not remove that protection – it is literally protecting lives and property,” said Grady McCallie, policy director with the North Carolina Conservation Network.

North Carolina legislators are considering a law that limits the state to use the WOTUS rule to identify wetlands.

The N.C. Farm Act of 2023 would strip the state’s ability to fill in gaps to protect federally nonjurisdictional wetlands, including isolated wetlands, which are those not directly connected to any body of water, but are hydrologically and ecologically valuable, environmentalists say.

The ongoing research into wetland damage and innovative restoration projects both in Currituck Sound and in the Florida everglades is the topic of this month’s “Science on the Sound” lecture series.

Set for 6 p.m. Thursday, postdoctoral researcher Dr. Sean Charles and Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary Director Robbie Fearn will lead the program, “Coastal Wetlands in a Changing World: Life, Loss and Restoration in Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary in Corolla and the Florida Everglades,” at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese.

“Coastal wetlands provide vital habitat for economically and environmentally important species, enhance water quality, and play a crucial role in reducing the impacts of climate change,” according to a statement from the university. “Wetland plants and soils sequester carbon from the atmosphere more efficiently than any other ecosystem, fighting global and protecting coastal communities from rising seas and intensifying storms. However, storms, rising seas, and saltwater intrusion in combination with local human impacts also leads to wetland damage and loss.”

Charles is a postdoctoral researcher in the Coasts and Ocean Observing Laboratory at Coastal Studies Institute. His research has focused on plant-soil interactions in coastal ecosystems, restoration and disturbance ecology.

Fearn oversees conservation planning impacting the greater Currituck Sound region, construction and renovation of the 2,600-acre property for programming and research activities and engages the community in protecting the property.

The institute, often called by its acronym CSI, hosts the monthly, in-person, lecture series that highlights coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina. The presentations are free of charge, and all are welcome to attend. The program will also be live streamed and a recorded version will be available on the YouTube channel.

The Coastal Land Trust announced Monday that the conservation organization has recently acquired two properties in Bertie County, a farm near Aulander and a large floodplain forest tract along the Chowan River near Colerain.

Brothers, Wayland L. Jenkins Jr. of Ahoskie and Joe Henry Jenkins of Nags Head, donated the 55.75-acre farm property to the Coastal Land Trust. The property, a portion of which has traditionally been known as the “Rice Farm,” was in the Jenkins Family for more than 100 years and has great sentimental value to the Jenkins brothers, land trust officials said. They elected to donate the property, a combination of cultivated land and woodlands, to the Coastal Land Trust to place the property in permanent conservation in honor of their mother’s wishes. The property lies within an area known as the Beaverdam Pocosin.

The Coastal Land Trust said it hopes to undertake a project to restore the native vegetation and natural hydrology of the former wetland site.

The Coastal Land Trust also completed the purchase of 421.38 acres along the Chowan River in Bertie County.

The acquisition involved the purchase of five adjoining riverfront parcels from six sets of landowners. The transaction was negotiated in 2019, contracts with each set of owners were entered into in 2020, and the purchase was completed at the end of 2022.

“One of North Carolina Coastal Land Trust’s board members, Dr. Stan Riggs, of Greenville, a well-known coastal geologist, introduced one of the landowners to us. That landowner, who was excited at the prospect of permanently conserving their land, then talked with their neighbors. It took a couple of years to pull this sale together,” said Coastal Land Trust Attorney and Northeast Region Director Lee Leidy. “All of these landowners and their attorney were committed to working to conserve their property, and that made all the difference.”

The combined tracts have more than 1.7 miles of frontage along the Chowan River and consist primarily of mature cypress gum swamp. Officials noted that the tracts are in the Colerain/Cow Island Swamp and Slopes Significant Natural Heritage Area and are classified as having high ecological significance.

After the Coastal Land Trust completed the purchase, it transferred the 421.38 acres, together with the 766.48-acre Keel’s Creek Tract, which the Coastal Land Trust purchased in December 2021, to the state to be managed by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission as part of the Chowan Swamp Game Lands, an almost 1,200-acre addition.

The purchases were made possible thanks to funding provided by the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, North American Wetlands Conservation Act and Coastal Programs grants, and the Enviva Forest Conservation Fund.

A workshop set for Friday offers instruction on how to better manage stormwater and prevent flooding to protect wetlands.

Set for 8:30 p.m. to 3 p.m., the New Hanover Soil & Water Conservation District, the Coastal Reserve & National Estuarine Research Reserve, Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, Wilmington Tree Commission, and North Carolina Cooperative Extension are hosting the workshop.

“Stormwater Management & Flooding Prevention on Wetland Landscapes” is being held at the New Hanover County Arboretum and North Carolina Cooperative Extension Auditorium, 6206 Oleander Drive, Wilmington.

Those interested in participating should register online. The fee is $10 and includes lunch. Participants also receive a thumb drive with all presentations from the day. Professional credits are available.

The workshop is designed to address drainage, stormwater management and flooding prevention for residential and commercial development on landscapes with large areas of jurisdictional wetlands, officials said.

While the workshop will focus on northern New Hanover County, which includes more than 20 square miles of predominantly poorly drained soils and very poorly drained hydric soils, the principles, practices, and regulations to be discussed in this workshop are applicable to drainage, stormwater management and flooding prevention for wetland conversion to development in any large wetland ecosystem.

Topics covered will include wetland definitions and characteristics, wetland regulatory programs, water management systems to facilitate wetland conversions to development uses and the economic and legal aspects of water management districts.

Leaders of an organization focused on protecting waterways in the White Oak River Basin say the information in the permitting public notice for Martin Marietta’s proposed 100-acre expansion plan for its limestone aggregate quarry in Maysville raises questions and may not convey the full extent of the environmental damage that could result.

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch announced Tuesday that it had submitted comments to the Army Corps of Engineers in response to the public notice issued in February for the proposed Belgrade Quarry expansion. Martin Marietta Materials Inc. seeks Army authorization to discharge fill material into 8.96 acres of wetlands and 899 feet of stream as part of the project. Plans include an approximately 8-acre expansion site north of the existing mine pit and a roughly 92-acre area south of the existing mine pit referred to as the “Bender Pit.”

The period for public comment on the proposed expansion ended March 26.

“Our overall goal is to protect the biological integrity of the watershed and to protect our waters as they exist naturally,” Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider said earlier this week.

Rider and Waterkeeper Rebecca Drohan told Coastal Review that the information in the Corps’ public notice was vague, raising questions of sufficiency. They said more information is needed about how the expansion, including a new area referred to in the application as the Bender Pit and the associated construction of a new road and road crossings, would affect the surrounding hydrology and wetlands.

The organization said the proposed Bender Pit would be a new pit, not an expansion of the existing mine pit farther north. The Bender Pit expansion site is surrounded by jurisdictional wetlands, the organization said in its submitted comments. Those wetlands provide important function such as flood control, pollution filtration, erosion control and wildlife habitat.

“Our coastal environment is one that can be resilient, but it’s very fragile, as well,” Drohan said. “Anytime that there’s proposed changes that may affect those functions, we’re definitely concerned.”

Martin Marietta East Division President in the company’s Raleigh office did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The quarry first opened off U.S. 17 and Belgrade-Swansboro Road in 1938 as Superior Stone, a Martin Marietta predecessor, and has been active as currently configured since 1988. The company said it needs to expand the operation from its current 1,605 acres “to cost-effectively mine construction grade aggregate reserves at the existing Belgrade Quarry facility.”

For the last year and a half, since the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule went into effect in June 2020, there has been a permitting gap in North Carolina for projects that would impact wetlands not subject to the Clean Water Act.

The state Environmental Management Commission voted earlier this month to approve permanent rules to cover the gap on these federally nonjurisdictional wetlands. Some members said it would be best to postpone the vote to allow for more public input amid concern with recent changes at the federal level to the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS. The push to get the permanent rules approved was because temporary rules put in place last May to address the regulatory gap are set to expire March 12.

The proposed permanent rule, Impacts to Federally Non-Jurisdictional Wetlands and Classified Surface Waters, and a rule amendment to Discharges to Isolated Wetlands and Isolated Classified Surface Waters are now set to go before the Rules Review Commission when it meets Feb. 17 in Raleigh.

North Carolina Division of Water Resources Wetlands Rulemaking Lead Sue Homewood played an integral part in developing both the temporary rules and the proposed permanent rules. She explained the process during the Environmental Management Commission’s online meeting Jan. 13.

“We ended up here because of changes back in 2020 to the Clean Water Act federal jurisdiction for wetlands in certain landscape positions,” she said. “Those changes in 2020 created a permitting gap. It did not change the definition of wetlands at the federal or the state level, it did not change what was a wetland, it did not change the protections in North Carolina for those wetlands. It solely changed how the federal agency implemented the Clean Water Act, and therefore changed how permitting was happening under Section 404 of that Clean Water Act.”

Homewood said that the gap meant the state had no permitting mechanism to authorize impacts to federally nonjurisdictional wetlands.

The Army Corps of Engineers determines whether a site is a wetland under section 404 of the Clean Water Act based on vegetation, soil and hydrology. The Corps identified about 300 wetlands in North Carolina as federally nonjurisdictional.

The Clean Water Act is a federal program to regulate the discharge of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States, including wetlands. The Clean Water Act provides discretion for Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps to define WOTUS.

The two agencies published in April 2020 the Navigable Waters Protection Rule in the Federal Register, which finalized a revised definition of WOTUS under the Clean Water Act. “In this final rule, the agencies interpret the term ‘waters of the United States’ to encompass: The territorial seas and traditional navigable waters; perennial and intermittent tributaries that contribute surface water flow to such waters; certain lakes, ponds, and impoundments of jurisdictional waters; and wetlands adjacent to other jurisdictional waters,” according to the Navigable Waters Protection Rule.

Because of the then-new rule, a type of wetlands classified under and protected by state law were no longer under federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction and there was no permitting mechanism to authorize unavoidable impacts to this group of wetlands.

Essentially, the rule created the category of federally nonjurisdictional wetlands, which are not isolated wetlands. These are wetlands with a direct connection to downstream waters, according to the division. The rule was vacated in August 2021, but the permitting gap remains.

“The state of North Carolina already had permitting mechanisms in place for federally jurisdictional wetlands, we have permitting mechanism in place for isolated wetlands, and those are wetlands that don’t have a direct connection to downstream waters. But the changes in 2020 created this middle category for which we didn’t have a permitting mechanism. And all that we are proposing is the ability for people to have these projects permitted (that) impact these nonjurisdictional wetlands,” she said.

Once that permitting gap was identified, the department moved as quickly as possible to propose temporary permitting rules, Homewood said.

“We proposed temporary rules because this permitting gap was a big problem for the regulated community, whether that was agriculture, state and local agencies trying to build roads and schools or development. So, temporary rules provided for the fastest process to provide expedited relief while the division continued the more detailed process of permanent rulemaking,” she said.

The temporary rules were adopted in May 2021 and set to expire March 12, 270 days after they were published in the Federal Register.

Homewood said public input during the temporary rulemaking process helped the staff address numerous concerns and also made the permanent rulemaking process go more smoothly.

The draft permanent rules were released for public review in September.

The Biden administration in June announced its plans to revise the definition of WOTUS. Then in August, a federal judge in Arizona vacated the Trump-era Navigable Waters Protection Rule. For now, the EPA and Corps are interpreting WOTUS using pre-2015 rules.

The EPA and the Corps announced Nov. 18 a proposed rule to revise the definition of the WOTUS, which was published Dec. 7 in the Federal Register and is currently in the public comment process that ends Feb. 7.

The federal agencies have released guidance on the changes and continue to update that guidance, as recently as a couple of weeks ago, Homewood said at the time.

The draft permanent rules went through the public notice process in late 2021, after the Navigable Waters Protection Rule was vacated, but only after one set of guidance was issued by the Corps of Engineers. There has been more recent information since the close of the public comment period and the drafting of this hearing officer’s report, she said.

Homewood presented the results, which are included in the Hearing Officer’s Report of Proceedings Public Hearing and Comment Period.

Homewood said that while many of the public comments were in support of the proposed permanent rules, the division did hear some opposition. A written comment from the North Carolina Farm Bureau states, “Do not believe that there is a need for the proposed rule given recent vacatur of the Navigable Waters Protection Rule and announcements from EPA and the USACE stating that they are beginning rulemaking regarding the definition of Waters of the United States.”

The agency responded that until litigation is final, there’s potential that the 2020 rule could be reinstated. “More importantly, approximately 300 wetlands have been identified as non-jurisdictional by the USACE during the period of time when the NWPR was in effect and these determinations remain valid until the expiration date established by the USACE (typically 5 years) irrespective of the status of the proposed federal rule revising the definition of ‘Waters of the Unites States.’ Project proponents who have unavoidable impacts to these wetlands would be prevented from proceeding with their proposed projects without a permitting mechanism. These rules provide certainty to the regulated community in both cases.”

While newer guidance has been interpreted differently by various entities, organizations and consultants, Homewood said the goal is to provide certainty at the state level regardless of the process at the federal level.

Despite the new guidance from the feds, the Division of Water Resources received confirmation from the Corps that the permitting gap still exists in North Carolina, Homewood said.

“The department has done as much investigation as possible. We have talked to various entities, most importantly directly to the Corps of Engineers,” she said. “A permitting gap does still exist, albeit narrower than we identified at the beginning of process, it is still there. Without these rules, there are wetlands out there who may not have the ability to be impacted. For whatever reason somebody would choose to impact them, we need these tools available so that the division can authorize those impacts.”

Speaking before Homewood’s presentation, Environmental Management Commission member Maggie Monast said that the confusion is “going to be ongoing and this is certainly not the last potential shift in the federal landscape on this issue, and so, for me, that just reinforces the need for clear state standards so that we can both protect wetlands appropriately and provide a stable environment for businesses, homes, agriculture, et cetera.”

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission will meet Thursday to consider adopting permanent rules that will fill in a permitting gap made by recent changes to Clean Water Act Federal Jurisdiction for wetlands in certain landscape positions.

The meeting is being held remotely because of the increase in COVID-19 cases. Attendees may join online or by phone. Remote access to the meetings is to be available Jan. 12.

The permitting gap applies to federally nonjurisdictional wetlands, which are not isolated but have a direct connection to downstream waters, as defined in the Navigable Waters Protection Rule.

These wetlands are no longer jurisdictional, subject to Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, but remain protected by the state. Finalizing these rules will “provide a permitting pathway for projects that require impacts to wetlands identified as ‘Federally Non-Jurisdictional’,” according to meeting documents.

Also on the agenda Thursday for the full commission, the Division of Water Infrastructure staff is to present on funding opportunities for water, wastewater and stormwater utilities through the American Rescue Plan Act and the Federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The Department of Environmental Quality is to give the commission an overview of recent legislation pertaining to utility-scale solar panel projects.

Committees are set to meet Jan. 12 starting at 9 a.m. with the Air Quality Committee, followed at 10:15 a.m. by the Groundwater and Waste Management Committee, at 12:15 p.m. by the Water Allocation Committee, at 1:30 p.m. by the Water Quality Committee and at 3:30 p.m. by the NPDES Committee. Committee agendas are online.

The Environmental Management Commission is responsible for adopting rules for the protection, preservation and enhancement of the state’s air, land and water resources. The commission oversees and adopts rules for several divisions of the Department of Environmental Quality, including the divisions of Air Quality; Energy, Mineral and Land Resources; Waste Management and Water Resources.

The Manteo Board of Commissioners has tabled until Nov. 3 any changes to the town’s 2007 Core Coastal Area Management Act land use plan update to accommodate filling wetlands for development.

During a workshop meeting Wednesday, commissioners held a public hearing on the proposed changes, which would include new language clarifying the definition of upland wetlands and permitted development, and unanimously agreed to table a decision. But before the vote to table, the board rejected the proposed changes known as Amendment 2 in a 2-3 vote.

Commissioner Richie Burke made the motion and voted in favor. Mayor Pro Tem Betty Selby provided the second and the second “yes” vote.

The push to amend the 2007 CAMA land use plan came from a developer looking to place fill in wetlands at 113 Ballast Point Drive in Pirates Cove. The developer, John Robbins, said during a May 5 presentation to the board that language in the land use plan prevents development of the lot.

Robbins spoke on behalf of a client who owns the property.

Robbins told the board that the address, which is also known as Village Landing Lot 101 in Pirates Cove, has been deemed undevelopable. The CAMA land use plan update states that “no new development or filling should be allowed within upland wetlands,” which Robbins said is keeping the lot from being developed, according to the May 5 minutes and video.

He took issue with the definition of upland wetlands, saying the town “erroneously has determined that upland wetlands exist in Pirate’s Cove when it’s clear they do not.”

The board opted to wait to learn more about how the rule change would affect other lots in town.

Back in May, commissioners directed town staff to draft land use plan amendments to address Robbins’ complaint.

The town’s planning and zoning board considered draft resolutions prepared by the town attorney during its July 13 meeting and made recommendations, according to documents. A public hearing was scheduled for Sept. 15 but was then rescheduled for Oct. 20.

Earlier this month, planning staff approved a building permit for new residential construction at 113 Ballast Point Drive.

MANTEO – Town officials have scheduled a public hearing this month to consider proposed policy changes regarding the filling of wetlands.

The hearing is set for 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20, at town hall, 407 Budleigh St., during a commissioner workshop on proposed changes to the 2007 Coastal Area Management Act Land Use Plan. 

Commissioners in May directed town staff to draft land use plan amendments to address a complaint about policies regarding development of and the placement of fill in upland wetlands.

The proposed changes include adding language regarding new development and fill of upland wetlands. The new language would define upland wetlands as those wetlands that are not coastal wetlands as defined by CAMA and state law and that are federally protected from dredging and filling without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act and certification from the North Carolina Division of Water Quality.

The planning and zoning board in July considered draft resolutions prepared by the town attorney and suggested changes to the resolution and recommended approval with those changes included.

Land use plan amendments follow a process that includes submittal to the Department of Environmental Quality Division of Coastal Management for certification.

The town provided the following forms relevant to the hearing:

• Proposed Resolution Amendment 1 
• Proposed Resolution Amendment 2
• Land Use Plan Amendment Attachments
• Land Use Plan Amendment Process
• 2007 CAMA Land Use Plan

For more information, contact Planner Melissa Dickerson at 252-473-4112. 

Officials with the Corps’ Wilmington district issued a public notice Thursday seeking comment on the application received from Richard V. Scarborough. The Corps had previously issued Scarborough a notice of violation for filling 0.29 acres of wetlands on the property without a permit last September.

Scarborough in his application proposes to restore 0.15 acres of the previously filled wetlands, which was a violation of Section 301 of the Clean Water Act, as well as additional filling of 0.1 acres of wetlands, resulting in a total of 0.25 acres of permanent wetland impacts, according to the Corps.

The Corps said it had suspended legal action on the violation pending the outcome on the application. The Corps’ said its final decision will be based on public comments on the proposed project. The decision could be to issue the permit with or without conditions or deny the proposed work.

“The decision whether to issue a permit will be based on an evaluation of the probable impacts including cumulative impacts of the proposed activity on the public interest. That decision will reflect the national concern for both protection and utilization of important resources,” according to the Corps.

Scarborough could not be reached for comment for this report.

The site, 437 and 455 The Lane in Wanchese, includes 0.65 total acres of wetlands and 0.12 acres of high ground. The 0.29 acres already filled was for a gravel parking lot. The proposed expansion includes construction of a new building, wastewater system, parking and drive aisles for large trucks delivering materials.

The project would be within the service area of an existing mitigation bank. The wetland fill would be mitigated by a purchase of 0.5 wetland mitigation credits at a ratio of 2:1 from Great Dismal Swamp Restoration Bank LLC, according to Corps documents.

The public notice triggers essential fish habitat consultation requirements under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Corps’ initial determination is that the proposed project will have no effect on essential fish habitat or associated fisheries.

No historic properties or endangered species would be affected, according to documents, but the Corps will request an opinion from the state Division of Coastal Management on whether the proposed work would comply with the North Carolina Coastal Zone Management Program.

How to comment

The Corps will accept written comments on the proposed work until 5 p.m., Sept. 16. Comments should be submitted to Billy Standridge, Washington Regulatory Field Office, 2407 West Fifth St., Washington, North Carolina 27889.

The public notice and all attached plans are available on the Wilmington District’s website.

Updated 3 p.m. July 18 with comments from Division of Coastal Management

DARE COUNTY — The Navy says its plan to permanently fill 30 acres of wetlands at the Dare County Bombing Range will have no significant effect on the environment.

Coastal environmental advocates said Wednesday they were unaware of the Navy’s plan.

According to an environmental assessment the Navy released Tuesday, the filling “will not significantly affect the quality of the human environment or natural environment or generate significant controversy.” The Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge surrounds the range.

The Navy said the project was needed to “continue to provide realistic training scenarios and complete maintenance operations while enhancing range personnel safety and increasing operational range clearance capabilities.” The Dare County Bombing Range is about 46,000 acres and the closest training range for pilots from Naval Air Station Oceana and Naval Station Norfolk.

The Navy said its review was conducted according to National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requirements and Navy regulations.

The Navy is to seek to mitigate the wetlands damage by purchasing wetland credits in the same watershed as the bombing range. The Navy will have to get a permit under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act and a state certification under Section 401 before construction.

The Navy operates the northern portion of the range under an agreement with the Air Force, which uses the southern portion.

Patricia Smith, public information officer for the Division of Coastal Management, told Coastal Review Online Thursday that DCM received the negative determination from the Navy in February and reviewed the project.

“DCM concluded its review and agreed to the negative determination in April because the proposed activity occurs entirely federal property and off-site impacts are not anticipated,” she said. DCM referred the Navy to the Division of Water Resources state certification process because authorization may be required.

Learn More

• FONSI-Signed 10 Jul 19

PENDER COUNTY —  A study will take place here to see how flooding and sea level rise will impact wetlands.

University of North Carolina Wilmington geography professor Joanne Halls, Cape Fear Council of Governments’ Wesley MacLeod and Pat O’Mahoney of Pender County’s planning department have teamed up for the project funded by North Carolina Sea Grant’s North Carolina Community Collaborative Research Grant Program, the Wilmington StarNews reported.

After studying how flooding and sea level rise will affect wetlands, the team will use geographic modeling software to establish the areas with the greatest change and where flooding poses the greatest risks.

Pender County and the Council of Governments are working together to update the county’s comprehensive development plan. Findings from the wetlands study could be used to inform future land use plans.

Learn More

• Researchers look at Pender flooding, wetlands

COLUMBIA – Pocosin land is supposed to be boggy. Nature designed it to be spongy and moist, creating a bulwark against wildfires and a haven for wild animals and plants. It is also a great carbon sink, one of its newly appreciated attributes.

When Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge was established in the 1991, the peat bogs had been drained and were dried out like crusty soil in a neglected potted plant. Instead of a firewall, it was fire fuel. Instead of holding carbon harmlessly in its swampy depths, it released it into the air.

But lately, the boggiest thing at the refuge seems to be a squabble over whether the refuge’s pocosin re-wetting project or Mother Nature is responsible for persistent flooding of surrounding farmland, with politicians in the farmers’ corner.

In recent years, the decades-long effort to restore wetlands at Pocosin Lakes has coincided with biblical rainfall. Farmlands adjacent to the refuge have been inundated, leaving crops rotting in drowned fields.  Landowners blame the refuge for mismanagement of stormwater. Refuge officials say the runoff would have happened, restoration or no restoration, because of a series of deluges this year from hurricanes Julia, Hermine and Matthew.

Pocosin Lakes refuge encompasses parts of Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties, a total of 110,000 acres of some of the wildest land in North Carolina’s coastal plain. These are also among the state’s poorest and least populated counties, with wildlife far outnumbering humans. Agriculture and timber remain important industries.

During a post-Hermine visit to Washington and Tyrrell counties in September, Gov. Pat McCrory and Agriculture Commissioner Steven Troxler publicly blamed federal regulations for the flooding.

“It appears that artificial manipulation of the water table at Pocosin Lakes NWR has again resulted in flooding of neighboring agricultural lands (which) are of great agricultural significance to North Carolina and the nation,” Troxler said later in a letter dated Oct. 4 to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe.

But refuge manager Howard Phillips said most of the runoff is related to excess rainfall that naturally drains downhill.

“Whenever anybody comes to us and they think this is causing anything, we go out and evaluate it,” he said. “Most of the time, it’s the amount of rainfall, or some other natural factor out there that we can’t control.”

For example, beavers have blocked a culvert in a canal that is shared with a private farm, Phillips said. The refuge has been working to re-direct the water.

As is often the case in clashes involving public natural resources, private property and people’s livelihoods, the situation is complicated, long-standing and potentially far-reaching. Floods and fires are health and safety hazards, and climate change is threatening to make both conditions more of a threat in an area vulnerable to both.

“We’re trying to mimic the natural hydrology as much as we can,” Phillips said. “Our mission is to restore pocosin wetlands. But one of the main reasons we’re doing this is because of the catastrophic wildfires.”

Another major benefit is the land’s value in carbon sequestration.

Pocosin, which means “swamp on a hill” – is shrubby peat wetland. Composed of organic material that decayed very slowly under the wet conditions, the peat has built up over centuries to a barely discernable dome.

As climate change has become a critical environmental issue, peat soil, composed of 50 percent carbon, has become much more interesting to scientists. Although peatland is only 3 percent of the Earth’s surface, it stores more than twice the carbon of all forests combined. Logic would have it that restored pocosin lands would hold more carbon. Conversely, if the peat burns, massive amounts of carbon are released into the environment. Dried-out peat, even when not burning, is believed to release some carbon.

“Some people have described this peat as pre-charcoal,” Phillips said.

There were two major fires in Pocosin Lakes in recent memory: the 1985 Allen Road fire , which burned 100,000 acres of land in Washington, Hyde and Tyrrell counties, and the 2008 Evans Road fire, on the tail end of a severe drought, burned for longer than six months on 50,000 acres in Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes refuges. The Evans Road fire alone cost $19 million to fight, with federal funds covering 60 percent of the expense.

Another major fire, the Pains Bay fire near Alligator River refuge in Dare County, burned 45,000 acres in May 2011. Smoke from the smoldering peat restricted training missions for weeks at the bombing range in Dare County used by Navy and Air Force jet pilots.

“We’re trying to reduce the severity and intensity of the fires that occur in these peatland areas,” Phillips said.

Three areas with the most ditching, totaling 35,000 acres, are being restored, the refuge manager said. About 20,000 acres – restoration area No. 1– is restored as much as it can be, Phillips said.  In area No. 2, he said, quite a bit needs to be done. But it turns out that area No. 3 will not need to be restored because the Alligator River has gotten higher, making the area wetter.

But local farmers, whose lands have been flooded, are not buying the explanations. They say the problem is mismanagement of the drainage system at the refuge.

“They’re holding that water artificially high in the refuge,” said Guy Davenport, with 5,000-acre Newland Family Farm in Creswell, which borders the refuge.

Davenport said a group of about 150 farmers from Washington, Tyrrell, Hyde and Beaufort counties met during the summer with state and federal officials, including McCrory and Troxler, to discuss the issue. They met again last month in Nash County.

Some farmers have lost all or part of their crops in the floods, he said.

“I have lived here long before it was a refuge,” Davenport said in a recent telephone interview. “I have never seen anything the likes of the water there in my lifetime. They’re right about excessive rain. But a lot of this problem could have been avoided.”

Water was coming across the road, flowing “full bore” out of Lake Phelps, and indirectly coming off the refuge into the lake, Davenport said.

“They need to lower the water table,” he said. “They need to have that water table down in hurricane season. It’s a tremendous amount of acreage. You can’t just drain it overnight.”

Davenport said that it is “fallacy” that re-wetting pocosin provides fire protection.

“That thing has always burned,” he said. “When you get dry enough, you’re going to have fires … that’s a fact.”

Before the land was acquired for the refuge, there had been a partnership called Peat Methanol Associates that had proposed to mine peat from 15,000 acres to synthetically produce 60 million gallons of methanol fuel per year over 30 years. The developer eventually withdrew its permit application.

Much of the land in Pocosin Lakes was ditched in the 1950s and ’60s. Massive canals had been cut through the peat domes, as well as thousands of acres in surrounding swamplands in northeastern North Carolina. The channels were cut north-south and east-west, creating 320-acre blocks of land, crisscrossed by smaller channels.

Water drained into the lateral ditches, then to collector canals then to main canals then to outlet canals, then to the Pungo River.

In a partnership with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the refuge implemented a hydrology restoration plan in the early 1990s. Water levels, which are allowed to fluctuate naturally, are determined by water control structures, rainfall and evapotranspiration. Currently, there is rewetting technology on about 18 percent of the refuge, and work on the plan will continue as funds allow.

Ditching and draining of swampland has been done since the founding of the nation. In fact, the oldest such canal – still in use in the Dismal Swamp – was ordered by none other than George Washington.

Typical swamplands are usually lower than surrounding lands, Phillips said, so water naturally drains to them. In contrast, the peatlands at Pocosin Lakes are domed, with an elevation of about 17 feet in restoration areas. The only water supply is rainfall, so once the restoration infrastructure was in place, it was a matter of waiting for rainfall to bring levels back up.

But in the last three years, rainfall has been extraordinarily high, by double digits, Phillips said. Normally, there had been about 51 inches a year, with all but 20 inches of that taken up by evaporation and plants. Last year there was about 71 inches. In 2016, the three storms dumped epic amounts of rain, leaving no recovery time in between.

In normal rain conditions, a healthy Pocosin welcomes water. “The peat would soak up the water like a sponge and release it very slowly,” Phillips said. “If it’s completely dried out, it becomes hydrophobic.”

Parched peat can burn for months and the fire can penetrate deep into the earth. What is burning up is decayed plants and animals.

“It gets really hot,” Phillips said. “It puts out tons of carbon.”

The payoff for re-wetting pocosin became evident when a wildfire in the refuge quit burning at the restored area, he said. But its value as a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, has become increasingly important as a way to offset the production of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

Back in the late ’80s, the refuge land was donated to the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group, which then transferred it to Fish and Wildlife. But the group has remained involved in conservation efforts in northeastern North Carolina, including the restoration of Pocosin and building of oyster reefs, said Debbie Crane, North Carolina chapter communications director.

The conservancy is currently conducting tests in two small blocks of land in the refuge to measure carbon output, Crane said. One area is restored and the other is not restored; the experiment is expected to continue for the next two to three years.  If it is proven that dry peat releases significantly more carbon than wet peat, it could open the door for landowners to innovative new carbon markets in California, which compensate participants for keeping carbon emissions out of the environment.

“Once we show this,” Crane said, “private landowners could potentially sell carbon credits and make some money if they restore their property.”

Learn More

• Hydrology restoration at Pocosin Lakes
• Questions and answers regarding the hydrology program