Wetlands,
like marshes or swamps, apply to the Clean Water Act. Wetlands are natural
cleaners of water systems and play an important ecological role stabilizing the
salinity and mineral content of estuaries, where rivers empty into the ocean.
Wetlands and swamps filter out the impurities of river water to go into the
ocean. This unique role that wetlands provide in nature gives businesses no
license to pollute coastal wetlands or inland swamps.
Contrary to popular
belief, wetlands are lush centers of biodiversity. The creatures that inhabit
America’s wetlands are subject to the same fragile parameters of ecological
balance as any other type of habitat. It is for this reason that the
Environmental Protection agency requires permits to dump certain pollutants
into wetlands.
The permit may only be issued by the secretary of the
Army, working through the Corps of Engineers. Dredged or fill material can only
be discharged from barges into navigable waters after public hearing and the
eventual issuance of state, regional or national permits to dredge and dump
waste into the muds of a wetland swamp area. Researchers have discovered that
swamps and wetlands are more fragile that they assumed.
It is for this reason
that the Army Corps of engineers does not issue dumping permits very often. The
Army Corps Engineers launched a program to tame the Florida Everglades back to
a natural wildlife habitat after serving as a remote dumping ground for many
people for a long time. The Corps of Engineers have received the funding from
the Clean Water Act to dredge to control the flooding of the Everglades.
The
Everglades is America’s largest wetlands. The Everglades are a complex network
swamps and navigable waters that are home to several Alligators, for which the
state of Florida is famous. These Clean Water Act Protections and Army
engineering programs were designed to keep human recreation in the Everglades
enjoyable.
The strictest restrictions on the polluting of wetlands applies to
the Everglades. However, large portions of swamp regions like the New Jersey
Meadowlands have been set aside as wildlife conservation regions.
Dumping
pollution into these wetlands harm the aquatic life of nearby rivers that flow
into the ocean Businesses and individual who are caught dumping in these
federal or state designated conservation areas will be fined heavily. It is
against the law to dump into wetlands without a permit.
Wetlands that do not connect to major bodies of navigable
water are not subject to the same type of scrutiny as their coastal
counterparts are. There might be local regulations on the dumping of pollutants
into these minor bodies of Water.
In Rapanos v. United States, the Supreme
Court ruled that bodies of water that do not empty into streams, rivers, lakes,
ponds, or other waters that accommodate boats are not applicable to the Clean
Water Act. The ruling does not keep states from making reasonable decisions to
outlaw pollutant dumping into Wetlands. The EPA also has jurisdiction over
chemical runoff. So certain measures must be made to reduce chemical runoff if
one’s farm is located near wetlands.
Runoff carries toxic herbicides and
pesticides to wetlands, threatening the wildlife that lives there. The
government has the authority to regulate this type of water pollution by virtue
of the Clean Water Act. The protection of America’s wetlands is a priority of
the United States government based on new knowledge that suggests the
importance of swamps in the preservation of all aquatic and terrestrial
life.
