Streamlined permits would aid economy, officials say

To help stimulate Georgia's economy, the Savannah district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to streamline permits for publicly funded projects such as bridges, roads and schools. To do that, it's proposing to increase the threshold for impacts to wetlands from these projects by up to 20-fold.

Response to the proposal has been sharply critical, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and at least 16 environmental groups worried the corps is jeopardizing ecologically important streams and wetlands in the process.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency weighed in with a four-page critique. Its biggest concern is that wetlands impacts under the new permits wouldn't comply with the Clean Water Act. Under the corps' current streamlined permits, a project can impact no more than half an acre of wetlands. The four newly proposed "regional general permits" would expedite projects that impacted up to 5 acres of wetlands for most projects or 10 acres for linear projects such as roads or pipelines.

"We thought the 10-acre limit was large," said Tom Welborn, EPA's branch chief of the wetlands, coastal and oceans program, who is continuing to discuss the permits with the corps. "We want to see if we can't reduce those limits."

The corps may also need to clarify how the acreage is calculated.

"If they were talking about 10 acres of (freshwater) marsh or bottomland hardwood forest in one location it may be too much," Welborn said. "Spread out it may be OK."

The permits are not likely to impact coastal Georgia as much as they do inland because their use is excluded in tidal waters, including tidal wetlands.