What’s Politics Got to Do With the Earth’s Lungs?

Legislative News by Nelda Holder –

I was a graduate student in environmental studies at Antioch New England and went on a field trip with my ecology class.

It’s odd, really, that I remember that day so vividly, but it was a beautiful and sunny experience of meandering through some New England woodlands on an old, old path, and coming to an opening in the trees that revealed a thriving wetland in all its glory—sitting there doing its job of cleaning water while supporting an amazing habitat of thriving plant and animal life.

I’d never thought seriously about those “wet spots” before … the smaller wetlands in my piedmont homeland. Sure, the coastal swamps seemed somehow mysterious and magnificent, but I had never stopped to appreciate their vitality of life and their vital value to wildlife and flood control. And to our history, as they contain some of the oldest wetland trees known in the world, including 2,600-year-old bald cypress trees.

And I had totally ignored both the existence and importance of mountain wetlands, where biological diversity thrives and supports a host of species. Think dragonflies. Those little flying glories plus amphibians, bats, and other terrestrial organisms all live in this mountain habitat treasure. Or think trees: sweet gum, hornbeam, hemlock, sourwood, tulip poplar, and many other species.

• An acre of wetland can store 1 to 1.5 million gallons of floodwater.
• Nearly all (90%) of our commercially harvested fish and shellfish depend on wetlands.
• Wetlands help replace water in underground sources and reservoirs by holding it after rainfall and slowly releasing it into the ground.
• Wetlands in North Carolina provide resting locations for migrating birds like tundra swans, songbirds, gannets, and more. They also serve as an important refuge for pollinating insects, which we rely on for pollinating most of our fruits and vegetables.

For millennia …

Enter the US Supreme Court

In a US Supreme Court ruling (Sackett v. EPA) made last year on a 5-4 vote, the definition of “waters” under the venerable Clean Water Act was changed to only include “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right,” as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion.

What does that mean? That federal protection was being taken away from precious areas such as the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina’s northeastern coastal—and rural—counties: Currituck, Camden, Pasquotank, Gates. Indeed, the ruling left 2.5 million acres of wetlands vulnerable, as reported in The Daily Tar Heel.

Enter the North Carolina State Legislature

What was the General Assembly’s answer to that vulnerability in the state’s natural system of swamps and wetlands and watersheds? Why, a Farm Act (SB 582) passed on June 7, 2023, vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper on June 23, 2023, and ultimately enacted by a veto override on June 27, 2023.

What does that mean? In simplest terms, two things. The state’s wetlands will suffer the loss of critical water cycle protections, critical habitat, and—tremendously important given the overall forecasts accompanying global warming—critical flood control. Or, put another way, what we have to gain is less water filtration and retention, compromised viability for a variety of plant and animal species, and increases in flooding in a state that faces critical flooding damages.

Or, to quote the governor: “The provision in this bill that severely weakens protection for wetlands means more severe flooding for homes, roads, and businesses and dirtier water for our people…”

So what is the benefit of this new law? Why was it considered favorably in the State House? (Granted, it was only part of the overall Farm Bill.) The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has this to say about the bill’s reclassification of protected wetlands:

“Unfortunately, in accordance with this destructive ruling, The NC Farm Act of 2023 reclassifies protected wetlands to only those ‘adjacent to bodies of water.’ Thanks to the Home Builders Association, who lobbied for the narrow definition, at least 2.5 million acres of vital wetlands are open for development in North Carolina.”

And so it is that the health of the state’s environment once against falls sway to those who would profit from destroying that environment—even when it so obviously means environmental degradation and a future of heavier and more costly flooding in a state hard-pressed to deal with the results of massive hurricane-induced flooding, with much more in the forecast.

Or, as that LCV article exposes, a study of coastal storms from 1996 to 2005 “found that one square kilometer of wetlands saves $1.8 million in property damages,” and credits wetlands with reducing “damages for coastal states by an average of 11 percent” during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.”

It’s nonsensical. One looming example of a legislature that follows the money … not the money of saving ourselves from costlier flooding in the state, but the money that took many of them to Raleigh to vote against our best interests as a citizenry.

More recently, and rigorously explained in the Carolina Public Press (Jack Igelman, March 15, 2024), the heavy effects of the state’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling were emphasized for western North Carolina in particular.

The article notes that the Southern Environmental Law Center estimates that federal jurisdiction over “nearly a million acres of wetlands in North Carolina” could be lost. The state’s Environmental Management Commission is revising the very definition of wetlands now in keeping with the 2023 NC Farm Act and the new US Supreme Court interpretations, and the CPP article lays out more potential damages for these critical habitats and our loss of “their ecological services.”

(Word to the wise: Read Igelman’s article for a broader perspective on just how the full state will be affected.)

Why this Matters

Just as the legislature voted to override Gov. Cooper’s veto of SB 582, so might it have failed to do so—thus continuing certain provisions of wetland preservation in this state. At a minimum, the override vote should be remembered and regularly brought up in discussions with legislative candidates. But this vote also serves as one more example of this legislature’s lack of integrity and ethics on behalf of the best interests of this state and its people.

There’s an election coming. ASK QUESTIONS. And expose the issues that truly matter for our wellbeing as a state and its people—and for the wellbeing of the geographical state itself as a composite of interdependent natural systems.

Nelda Holder is the author of The Thirteenth Juror – Ferguson: A Personal Look at the Grand Jury Transcripts.