What Are The Wetlands

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.

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