Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 25, 1993 TAG: 9308250043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The construction and mining industries argued in a lawsuit that regulators must get congressional approval for certain policy changes announced by the Clinton administration.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court by the National Association of Homebuilders, the American Mining Congress, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association and the National Aggregates Association.
It challenged a regulation that would require permits for ditches, channels and other forms of excavation in wetlands.
The administration says the rule is needed to prevent efforts by developers, using sophisticated construction methods, to bypass regulation.
The legal challenge came after environmentalists, farm groups and others expressed a mixture of approval, disapproval and skepticism about the wetlands plan.
"This is a classic Clinton compromise," said Don Parrish of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation's largest farming group. "It didn't make us happy. It isn't going to make the environmentalists totally happy."
There are an estimated 100 million acres of wetlands in the 48 contiguous states and 170 million acres in Alaska. Wetlands were being lost at the rate of nearly 300,000 acres a year in the mid-1980s.
Swamps, marshes and other wetlands support wildlife and biological systems and are key to flood control, filtration of ground water and maintenance of water quality.
Noting the nation has lost half its wetlands outside Alaska since European settlement, the plan endorses a short-term goal of no net loss of wetlands and a long-term effort to increase wetlands.
by CNB