WETLAND RED TAPE HOLDS UP SCHOOL PLANS

With the passage of a local bond issue and the governor's budget recommendation of $1.65 million, it seemed Cape Girardeau's proposed vocational-technical and new high school had a green light.

Wrong.

A patch of wet ground with trees has delayed plans on the high school portion, which the district had hoped to bid at the end of this month. It also delayed the bidding process on the vocational school.

The Army Corps of Engineers and Missouri Department of National Resources have designated 3 1/4 acres as a wetland. It rests smack in the middle of the district's 72-acre property, at the location of the proposed football field. It's between the vocational and high school buildings.

Neither the district nor the former property owner knew of the problem before the sale.

This development is nothing short of ludicrous. No endangered animal has been threatened. No natural wonder will be destroyed.

A wetland is simply soil that is covered by water most of the growing season. Most of Southeast Missouri would have qualified before the swamps were drained in the early part of this century.

But the school district can ill afford to cross Uncle Sam. Disturbing a wetland is a federal violation. The feds are protecting wet areas, they say, because of the diminishing number of wetlands in the United States.

Government officials explain that wetlands are inhabited by specific plants and animals such as swamp oaks, willow oaks, cattails, horsetails, aquatic turtles, muskrat and mink. Are any of these endangered? Do any live on this particular muddy patch in Cape Girardeau?

The whole process seems so arbitrary.

If the wetland exceeds three acres, the process of dealing with government red tape could take up to six months. If the property is smaller, the process may take only 30 days. The school district's wetland is only a quarter-acre over the cutoff, which is likely to make the whole process more time-consuming and costly.

But here's the kicker: If a wetland is so precious, why can property owners swap out land? Mitigation allows other property owners to substitute land with wetland characteristics some place else. Really?

The land swap comes with conditions -- more federal rules -- of course. Property owners have to give three acres for every acre of wetland. Locally, dirt would have to be removed from the land, which could cost between $2,000 and $10,000 an acre.

Any landowner could help the process by volunteering some swampy acres of land to be designated a wetland. That would certainly save the district considerable time and dollars.

Meanwhile, this bureaucratic nonsense has thrown a wrench in the project. It just this kind of arbitrary red tape that really turns people sour on government.