A little-known wetlands recovery group showcases the District's environmental restoration efforts.

The Corps' emerging role as a force for environmental restoration may best be seen in the most important group you've never heard about--the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project.

A few folks in the corridors of state political power know about the project, because they've either funded it or fought it the past several years in Sacramento. Top officials of federal, state and local bureaucracies also recognize the project as a rare example of successful collaboration among government agencies more used to squabbling than cooperating. Finally, environmental activists and corporate captains alike have come to view the project as a forum where they can contribute to at least partial restoration of California wetlands.

Why wetlands? If you define them to include lagoons, marshes, coastal estuaries and other riparian resources, it’s clear that wetlands compose a critical part of the Endless Summer mystique that has lured humans here for thousands of years.

With humans has come progress and, of course, the degradation of natural resources. Over the past 200 years, for example, 53% of the original 221 million acres of wetlands in the U.S. have been lost in the lower 48 states. In California, however, that ratio skyrockets to 91%. According to a Spring 2000 article in the Golden Gate University Law. Review by Joan Hartmann, California has lost about 80% of its coastal salt marshes, 95% of its riparian wetlands, 90% of its freshwater marshes and 90% of its vernal pools.

Hartmann also cites some other stunning research: According to a National Research Council report, California has lost more wetlands than any other state. As part of the price of development, the hardening of the SoCal landscape destroys wetlands directly and indirectly by changing hydrology and by draining pollutants straight to bodies of water, Hartmann says.

What's left of the wetlands obviously is precious. California has more endangered species than any other state, and most of them--at some stage of their life cycle--depend on wetlands for survival and growth.

And wetlands, of course, are where the Corps and District come in. The Corps is one of 17 state, federal and local agencies in the Recovery Project. In an inspired official choreography, the governmental entities work hand-in-hand with private corporations and nonprofit organizations. Using a non-regulatory approach, they seek to acquire and restore wetlands with a coherent and visionary strategy.

John Gill, a biologist and environmental manager in the District’s Planning Division, was a charter member when participants first started meeting in late 1994. “We wanted to do something all our agencies could participate in,” he recalls. At the time, mitigation of wetlands in Southern California wasn’t very effective. (Mitigation can offset adverse impacts by preservation, restoration, enhancement or the creation of new wetlands where none existed before.) It wasn’t until four years later that a working agreement was signed and the Wetlands Recovery Project was formally recognized.

The Project is an active buyer of land on which wetlands are located, as long as there is a willing seller of the property.

More recently, the Project has evolved into a grant-providing body. “People can apply to us if they have good projects they want to do for wetlands,” Gill explains.“We fund many of the larger projects on a cost-sharing basis.” So far, some 15 to 20 projects have been funded by the Project. For the fiscal year 2002-03, a whopping 69 projects have been proposed for funding and some portion of themeventually will be funded.

Projects already underway have led to the acquisition of almost 5,000 acres and the restoration or enchancement of more than 500 acres. They have established habitats for migratory birds, threatened and endangered species and fish and provided ecological services throughout the region. From the Carpinteria Salt Marsh in Santa Barbara County to the Tijuana Estuary in southern San Diego County, the Restoration Project's guiding hand has helped improve the quality of life for people in Southern California.

Besides the obvious environmental benefits, the region’s wetlands provide gargantuan economic payoffs. Tourism is a $55.2 billion annual enterprise in California, including $10 billion for coastal tourism and $3.6 billion for wildlife viewing. In L.A. County alone, more than 270,000 jobs are supported by natural resources assets. Sport-fishing along the southern two-thirds of the state’s Left Coast totals $536 million annually.

No wonder wetlands have attracted such heavyweight attention.

One special, and possibly unique, feature of the Project is that if anybody opposes a plan—even a single member—it doesn’t get done. Projects have to be approved unanimously. “One might think this veto power would make us weak,” says Gill, “but, no, in good teamwork style, we make sure everybody’s onboard.”

It hasn't all been hats and horns. Disputes, lawsuits, cloakroom deals and other necessary evils of a democratic political system have sometimes slowed the Recovery Project's momentum. "Wetlands law is not for people with an aversion to ambiguity," writes Hartmann, outreach director of the Recovery Project who holds both a Ph.D and a law degree and has been active in environmental issues in California for decades. "It is a litigator's delight and an abject frustration to those who seek certainty." Hartmann also was a wetlands enforcement attorney at the EPA's Region 3.

There are both altruistic and pragmatic reasons for the District’s involvement:

--The Corps should help when there’s an initiative like the Wetlands Recovery

Project out of a spirit of cooperation;

--Some of the wetlands projects could affect Corps projects and vice versa;

--The Corps regularly issues permits for wetlands, and most of the projects funded by the Wetlands Recovery Project will eventually need permitting; if because of its involvement in the Recovery Project the Corps already knows something about the applicant, it makes the permitting process faster and easier.

There are similar groups in the Bay Area and Central Valley, but the Southern California organization increasingly is being touted as a model. One reason is that the Project boasts five county task forces--chaired by a leading nongovernmental organization and a county supervisor. Local government thereby becomes an active participant in planning and project development in protecting regional waters.

Hartmann emphasizes the crucial role of the Corps in the Recovery Project. “The Corps is the agency Congress likes most to fund and to channel money through,” she says. “We’ve made a lot of progress since 1998 and had our first funding. We have a long way to go, and the Corps will be key to how it unfolds.

"Ultimately, we hope that we might build on these efforts with the Corps to obtain a continuing authroity from Congress--modeled on the Everglades restoration program--that would bring federal money into the effort.