Wetland Survey Insanity

Man on one of the farms I am leasing. They came out and tried that same stuff. Literally on top of a hill and I had made a burn pile to burn some debris tree tops that had fallen in a storm. Once everything had burned up and ashes had cooled I scooped up the ashe pile spread them around as fertilizer. Well i scooped a small whole I mean a couple inches deep about 4 ft wide. Not paying attention. It rained the day they came out yep they flagged that as wetlands. Thank goodness I knew the guy in charge and he came and looked and said yeah they get a little overkill a lot.

It is not a factor of reality, it is a factor of control and continued power. A bit like claiming every rain drop has magically arrived at the Waters of the United States at whatever point that drop stops falling.

So true. It has gone way past the This is not funny anymore for sure.

If something can be regulated, it will be, and not for the sake of saving the planet but, for the sake of governmental agencies justifying their mere existence.

Totally agree. The whole system is designed to get bigger and bigger . Very bloated. I lived it for a while. I worked with some very smart and hard working people. And then there were those who got a paycheck. Honestly the 20% did 80% of the work.

It's essentially a land grab. No matter how small the delineated areas are, they will have some sort wetlands buffer applied to them based on their "resource" value.

There is this type of wetland that is created by trees (generally cedars according to the wetland guys) growing, falling, growing, etc. Creates this area on a gentle slope that catches water and also provides little bits of uplands. I went through and mapped the whole flippin thing, because some idiot had flagged it. Days and days.

Now, I was a pretty new party chief and about the third day on the wetland, my boss asked how much I had left and when I told him we had like a thousand shots and were not going to finish today, his brain exploded. I didn't know better, but after that I did. With all the buffers, why delineate all the little bits?

Of course, after $10's of thousands spent, the project died...

It’s essentially a land grab. No matter how small the delineated areas are, they will have some sort wetlands buffer applied to them based on their “resource” value.

LOL.

There are certain jurisdictions (I am looking towards Microsoft)), that have a buffer for the buffer. So, there is a wetland (holy of holy, apparently, even though our fathers drained them all over) and that wetland has a buffer determined by type of wetland (have to determine how big the holy area is to protect the holy of holy). Ok, the purpose of the buffer is so that we protect the wetland. Except there is this "logic" in the world that thinks that if you can't intrude into the buffer, then you cant use that as your boundary...you need an offset to that buffer...a buffer tract for the buffer, see? But that is a buffer too, so you can't go in...

A buffer on a buffer, and I kept telling the inspector they needed another buffer to keep us out of their new buffer.

Please pleas don’t give them any ideas. On another place I lease the guy took a back hoe and dug a 50 ft round area about a .5 ft to 1 ft deep. Tilled it all up for his kids to have a mud hole to mud big in with their atv and go cart. He wants to bring the usda folks out and apply for a grant. I told him we needed to fix that are first he can re do it after. Yes they will have a wetlands delineation done for the grant he wants. So he decided to hold off another summer. Kids are pre teen age and he figured they will be tired of the mud lol. I honestly think they would classify that mud hole he made. They want ponds streams creeks foot print holes where a cow peed lol if it can hold water for a second they own it.

New Jersey has some interesting history. The southern part of the state of the state was unique in that it consisted of largely pine forest. The soils were such that the waters were brown in color through the rivers and streams that were heavy in nutrients that led to the sediments creating "bog iron".

In the pre-revolutionary war days, wealthy people figured it out and purchased massive acreage along rivers and streams for the purpose of building iron forges, powered by furnaces that required both clear cutting the pines and mining the bog iron to create all things iron in common usage, and, to forge the cannon balls, cannons and other necessary items used to fight both the revolution and civil wars. The largest portion of the pine forests were clear cut more than once and there was not a river or stream that was not mined for bog iron.

Flash forward to the 1970's when state politicians lobbied the Federal Government and successfully got over a million acres over several town and counties to create the Pinelands National Reserve to protect the "pristine" forest from development. That made properties within the pinelands worthless, with the owners not being compensated. Not many lad grabs like this have ever happened, historically.

What makes things even better is that a Pinelands Comprehensive Management plan was drafted by state appointed officials who call the shots and not a single one of them has ever lived in the pinelands to this day.

Now that’s some neat history. I love history. Maybe next time you send a crew down there have them forge me a couple Dutch ovens. Love my cast iron. It is amazing though what people did all through history without a smart phone or app. So much we owe those who came before us.

We did a wetland study and determined that the soil is not hydric, The Corps wetland agent went to the site after he received my data without telling me, and came back and said that the soil is hydric.

I hired a professional soil scientist with a master degree in soil science and 30 years of experience in identifying and mapping soils, including wetland soils. That is all he does. He went out and dug holes 2x2x2 and sat on the ground with his feet in them for an hour each. He had a small microscope and a bunch of tools. He concluded that the soil was not hydric, and he wrote a report and filled out data sheets. I submitted to the Corps. The agent said he disagreed, and that the soil is hydric. I sent him back out and got him to do 50% more holes than he had done, plus I did about 10 holes in addition to the 4 I had done earlier. I hired a PhD botanist to look at my vegetation analysis, and he found it not hydroophytic and ask me who in the hell could believe this perennial rygrass and persian clover could be a wetland. Another wetland scientist with a MS in soils confirmed his work for me. The agent rejected his second set of data as well. Agent said that no number of experts could change his mind unless they wanted to meet him on site. The wetland scientist agreed to meet so I emailed the Corps guy and said we had two wetland scientists ready to meet him on site along with me. The response was that he was too busy and could not meet and the case was closed and a wetland permit was needed. The area is a hay field. I had also hired a PhD botanist who said the vegetation is not hydrophytic. It is a hayfield. Insane situation. Don't know what to do. He refuses send me his data.

This has about a $500,000 effect on my client, and there is apparently NOTHING I can do about it.

A community water project was to expand two adjacent dams that impounded water just above where two streams merge. Both dams were needing repair so by connecting the two a much larger impoundment of fresh water would be created.

However, there were wetlands upstream of the left dam, and one was so "pristine" that the project was scrapped, a much smaller impoundment expansion was created by the right (right/left looking downstream) dam.

Had they permitted it two years earlier it would have been all done.

I was tasked to go up and locate the wetland, which turned out to be a small mud hole that the access road wallows through.

The wetland was given one of the highest scores that the project engineer had ever seen, when asked what type of wetland could score higher he said; "A wetland in heaven".

All the plans to mitigate the wetland issue were rejected, a rare frog was discovered that existed no where else on earth.

So, thirty years on the community is exploring new sources of water including a massive pipeline project which is fraught with water right issues, and of course wetland crossings.

And I've heard that the rare frog has popped up in many places since, it's a well traveled species, able to hop hundreds of miles; seemingly overnight.

Sounds familiar to the tree frogs that are quite common in the area of the pinelands. I've got a project that has been in the approval process for at least 20 years and in the next month or two should be approved. I can only report back on that when it happens.