Stop Stripping Legal Protections from Local Wetlands
Posted April 18, 2006

• Background    
• Why this is important
• What's next
• What you can do    

Local governments have incorrectly limited wetlands protections to only those wetlands under Clean Water Act jurisdiction while ignoring other wetlands. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires assessing ALL impacts to wetlands. Please write to Santa Clara County and tell them to confirm that CEQA protects all wetlands!

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Background
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires local governments to “look before you leap.” Before issuing permits or taking other actions, they must consider the environmental consequences of their actions. Only by clearly weighing the harm to the environment against a project’s benefits can we ensure that a decision to move forward with a proposal is worthwhile.

CEQA provides very broad (and crucial!) protection for our local environment by mandating a process for “looking before leaping,” but a general environmental law like CEQA cannot establish every single environmental standard. For specifics, local governments often turn to other laws to measure environmental impacts, like the Clean Air Act to measure air pollution impacts, and the Clean Water Act to measure water impacts.

Problems arise, however, when local governments adopt for CEQA purposes some other environmental standards that do not assess all the potential impacts. The Clean Water Act, for example, protects some wetlands, but not all of them. Wetlands isolated from rivers and lakes get no Clean Water Act protection even when they have tremendous environmental value. Local governments must stop denying CEQA protections to these wetlands.

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Why this is important
Santa Clara County has refused to comply with CEQA and assess environmental impacts to all wetlands, even when we pointed out their mistake. Morgan Hill city staff recently started to do the same thing, but to their credit they listened to our comments and changed their decision. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will soon resolve two lawsuits that could limit the Clean Water Act even more, making it even more important for agencies to apply CEQA to wetlands left unprotected by the Clean Water Act.

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What's next
Most wetlands in Santa Clara County will be under the County government jurisdiction. If the County applies CEQA policy correctly, most of the problem will be fixed, and local governments should follow suit.

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What you can do
Write or fax Santa Clara County Supervisors. Let them know that you expect full application of CEQA to all wetlands, not a neglect of wetlands outside of the Clean Water Act. Ask them to direct County staff to report back what their CEQA policy will be for the “non-jurisdictional” wetlands that lack Clean Water Act protections.

Please write or fax the Supervisors by Friday, April 28th, to begin moving this process forward.

Write to:

Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors
County Government Center
70 W. Hedding Street, 10th Floor, East Wing
San Jose, CA 95110
Fax (408) 298-8460

No time to write or fax?
Email the Santa Clara County Supervisors.

Please send a copy of your message to CGF so we can track our efforts on this issue: fax 650-968-8431 or email: action@GreenFoothills.org.

Thanks for speaking up for trails. Your voice does make a difference!

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