WETLAND MITIGATION AND THE ROLE OF NEPA
Abstract
This paper examines wetland mitigation in the context of the recent Areawide Environmental
Impact Statement (AEIS) on Phosphate Mining in the Central Florida Phosphate District
prepared by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE or Corps), and discusses
the role the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) may play in a re-evaluation
of the current policy and practices of wetland mitigation.
The phosphate industry is seeking to construct new mines and expand existing mining
activities in the Central Florida Phosphate District and has applied to the USACE
for permits under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which prohibits the discharge
of dredged or fill material in waters of the United States, including certain wetlands,
without a permit from the Corps. Three of the applications were submitted by Mosaic
Fertilizer, LLC and one by CF Industries, Inc.
The impacts to wetlands from the proposed mining activity in question are primarily
associated with land preparation (clearing and grading), the actual mining of phosphate,
and the construction of associated infrastructure. Within the areas that are mined,
wetlands are drained and cleared prior to mining. Mining infrastructure consists
primarily of the beneficiation plant where phosphate is separated from other minerals,
clay settling areas (CSAs), ditch and berms systems, and corridors connecting the
mining areas with the beneficiation plant.
NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the environmental effects of their actions.
As a federal agency, the Corps has determined that issuance of the four permit applications
constitute a “major Federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human
environment” under NEPA, and, as required by the Act, has prepared a detailed statement.
According to John Fellows, Regulatory Project Manager with the USACE, once it was
determined that the mining projects would have significant impacts, an environmental
impact statement, or EIS, was considered the appropriate tool to satisfy the requirements
under NEPA rather than a less detailed environmental assessment, or EA, which is standard
for projects with minimal environmental impacts. Further, given the expanse of the
mining sites (the four sites contain 37,103 acres within the 1.32 million-acre Central
Florida Phosphate District) and the similarity of the four mining projects, one comprehensive
impact statement was considered appropriate, which has been designated an Area Environmental
Impact Statement. The Notice of Availability for the draft AEIS was published on
June 1, 2012 and the comment period, initially 45 days, was extended to July 31, 2012
after pressure from local stakeholders who had requested a 90-day extension.
A third piece of relevant legislation, actually more of a national policy, is the
“No Net Loss” goal of wetland preservation. First pronounced in 1989 by President
George H. Bush and followed by subsequent administrations, No Net Loss seeks to preserve
the nation’s wetlands by directing that any wetlands destroyed by a given activity
must be replaced by the same amount, so that on balance what is eliminated is made
up for, and so there is no “net” loss of wetland function. An applicant for a Section
404 permits whose activities will impair or destroy wetlands must propose to compensate,
or mitigate, for any loss of wetland acreage or function. In the current phosphate
mining applications, the estimate of existing wetlands to be disturbed is approximately
9,849 acres, and so a need for compensatory mitigation is evident.
The proposed mining activities will also have a potential wide range of environmental
consequences, such as effects on streams and waterways, habitat loss from the enormous
land requirements needed for mining, the demands on the local water supply (phosphate
mining requires massive amounts of water to separate out the phosphate from the ore),
the effects of construction on neighboring land uses and communities, and the storage
of the hazardous byproduct phosphogypsum. However, this discussion is restricted
to mitigation efforts as they relate to jurisdictional wetlands.
Type
ReportSubject
NEPA, WETLAND, MITIGATIONPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6001Citation
McCarthy, Michael (2012). WETLAND MITIGATION AND THE ROLE OF NEPA. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6001.Collections
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