WETLANDS HEARING SET AT PORTAGEVILLE

A joint state legislative committee investigating ways to preserve thousands of acres of wetlands in Missouri will hold one in a series of public hearings today in Portageville.

At its first hearing last month in Jefferson City, the panel heard from representatives of state and federal agencies and interested groups who provided an overview of the wetlands issue. Now lawmakers are seeking input from people.

Rep. Larry Thomason, D-Kennett, House chairman of the committee, said, "The committee's goal is to study the situation and find ways to protect existing wetlands and restore destroyed wetlands."

Chairing the Senate contingent is Sen. Jerry Howard, D-Dexter, who sponsored the resolution calling for formation of an interim joint committee during the 1991 legislative session.

The hearing will begin at 9 a.m. at the University of Missouri Delta Center. The committee will tour a wetland at the Lee farm. Anyone may attend the hearing.

"We have heard from a lot of the agencies, and at this hearing we hope to hear about some individual situations," said Thomason. "There are apparently a lot of horror stories all over the state."

A federal government policy requires that each acre taken out of wetlands for development must be replaced with another acre somewhere in the nation as part of a "no-net-loss" policy.

The issue is important to the Bootheel since most of its farmland is drained swamp. "Basically, from Benton hills south, the entire Bootheel is wetlands," said Thomason. At one time the Bootheel had 2.4 million acres of wetlands.

Thomason said the best way to preserve wetlands is to purchase areas that can be developed as wetlands as they become available rather than declaring certain areas of private land as wetlands.

Ninety percent of Missouri's wetlands have been destroyed since the mid-1800s. Thomason said preserving them is important because for farmers wetlands serve as a natural flood-control area and they stabilize the weather.

Wildlife also benefit from wetlands because they provide an area for breeding by fish and fowl. Wetlands can also serve as filters for rainwater or standing water.

Wetlands are defined as, "land containing much soil moisture." Wetlands contain waterlogged soil that is covered by shallow water part of the time. There are many types of wetlands in the country, including swamps, forested wetlands, marshes, wet meadows, stream beds, and natural ponds and lakes.

A key concern the joint committee has, said Thomason, is that many of the agencies that make decisions on wetlands do not agree on the definition.

"There seems to be a lot of confusion among three of the four federal agencies that deal with wetlands," said Thomason. "Not only did they have a different idea of what constitutes wetlands, regardless of what the definition is, but had different approaches to the issue. None of the agencies could tell us precisely what they were doing. It was real frustrating to hear from the federal agencies last month."

Thomason said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Agriculture, and Environmental Protection Agency all seemed confused with the issue. The Corps of Engineers, however, did seem to know what was going on, Thomason said, because it handles all the permits.

Thomason said he learned from the hearing that if wetlands are declared on property they are treated as an easement.

Missouri had more than 4.5 million acres of wetlands when the state was settled; now it has 450,000 wetland acres.

In the United States, excluding Alaska, there are 99 million acres of wetlands; Alaska has an additional 200 million acres.

Thomason and Howard said they hope to develop wetlands legislation to be considered by the General Assembly next year.