ELI's Wetlands Research and Policy Analysis

The Environmental Law Institute's groundbreaking research on wetlands law and policy continues to examine federal and state protections for aquatic resources, including developments in federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction and tools for local wetlands protection.

Priority Areas of Expertise and Resources:

• Compensatory Mitigation Research: ELI conducts detailed research to evaluate compensatory mitigation required to offset adverse impacts to wetlands. ELI studies all compensatory mitigation mechanisms, including mitigation banking, in-lieu fee mitigation, and permittee-responsible mitigation.

• Protecting Wetland and Aquatic Resource Buffers: ELI has researched state and local laws, regulations, and ordinances that control development and other activities in areas adjacent to wetlands and aquatic resources to compare approaches and identify models. The Planner's Guide to Wetland Buffers for Local Governments (2008) identifies both the state of the art and the range of current practice in protection of the lands adjacent to wetlands by local government ordinances, providing information on buffer sizes, land use restrictions, enforcement, and other factors that cities and towns need to know to manage land use and development in these important areas.

• Avoidance and Minimization of Impacts to Wetlands: ELI has conducted research to identify the range of current federal and state regulatory practices and procedures used to require projects to avoid and minimize impacts to wetlands when seeking regulatory approvals. ELI has released separate reports on federal and state level avoidance and minimization regulations: The Federal Wetland Permitting Program: Avoidance and Minimization Requirements (2008) and State Wetland Permitting Programs: Avoidance and Minimization Requirements (2008).

• State Wetland Program Evaluation: ELI has completed a fifty-state study that describes and analyzes seven "core" components of state wetland programs: state laws, regulations, and programs; monitoring and assessment; restoration programs and activities; water quality standards; public-private partnerships; coordination among state and federal agencies; and education and outreach activities. The ELI Study of State Wetland Programs Webpage includes summaries on individual states and ELI's final report describing status and trends, model programs, and summary data for all fifty states.

• Clean Water Act Jurisdiction: ELI works to support protection for wetlands and waters no longer protected by the federal Clean Water Act in the wake of two pivotal Supreme Court decisions. ELI's Clean Water Act Jurisdictional Handbook, Second Edition (2012) is the comprehensive resource for applying science and law to this tangled jurisdictional problem, and Anchoring the Clean Water Act: Congress's Constitutional Sources of Power to Protect the Nation's Waters (2007) identifies which constitutional powers Congress can rely on to protect water, and explains what the Supreme Court has said about these powers. America’s Vulnerable Waters: Assessing the Nation’s Portfolio of Vulnerable Aquatic Resources since Rapanos v. United States (2011) provides an assessment of wetland, stream, and other aquatic resource types that have not been protected under the Clean Water Act following a 2006 Supreme Court decision. . ELI also will release new studies of states' abilities to protect wetlands and waters no longer subject to federal Clean Water Act Jurisdiction.
  

Related ELI Project Areas: Ocean; Water Quality; Water Resource Management; Wetlands; International Water.

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