by Steven J. Wamback

Created on: April 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

Wetlands ecosystems and habitats are protected as "Waters of The United States" under The Clean Water Act just the same as lakes, rivers, and ocean shores. Wetlands serve as important resources, not only to the plants and creatures which inhabit them, but to humans as well. For in addition to their aesthetic, ecologic, and recreational functions to our communities, they also serve as flood water retention basins and pollution filters for our cities. Wetlands have been shown to absorb toxins and pollutants (actually metabolizing them in many cases!) where open water ecosystems have been shown to be more severely and adversely affected by similar quantities of the same contaminants.

Wetlands habitats are transitional between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and may possess some of the characteristics of either or both. Section 404 of the Clean Water Act declares wetlands to be considered as "the Waters of the United States" and as such affords them the same protection provided to lakes, rivers, and other aquatic ecosystems. Wetlands include marshes, swamps, bogs, stream banks, beaches, and floodplains.

According to the Clean Water Act (33 USC 1344), Corps of Engineers Wetlands Delineation Manual (1987), The Federal Manual for Identifying and Delineating Jurisdictional Wetlands (1989, currently under moratorium), and other Federal publications, wetlands are defined as "Those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions."

The protection of wetlands has been instituted because of the numerous ecological and human values that they afford. These values include, but are not necessarily limited to, fish and wildlife habitat, retention of floodwaters, erosion control, recreational activities, groundwater aquifer recharge, aesthetics, and pollution control by assimilating, chemically degrading, and biologically metabolizing pollutants and toxins released by humans into the natural environment. Wetlands rival tropical rain forests in their ability to remove carbon dioxide from and liberate oxygen into the atmosphere by shear virtue of their productivity and biomass. Hence, numerous State and Federal regulations have been instituted to protect these valuable wetlands resources.

Identification of wetlands is based upon three general criteria... vegetation, soils, and hydrology.

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