Wilson sues to stop wetlands rule, calling it burdensome on landowners

S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson, who last year blasted a federal plan to protect many creeks and wetlands that are vulnerable to development, joined a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the proposal.

Federal agencies say the new rule is intended to clarify U.S. Supreme Court decisions from the early 2000s, but Wilson says the proposal “unlawfully expands” federal authority to include roadside ditches and farm ponds on private property.

“The results of this rule will carry a tremendous cost to our state, our economy and our families,” Wilson said in a news release Tuesday, noting that the rule could make it expensive to build roads and subject people who violate the rule to fines of $37,500 per day.

Conservation groups disagree that private landowners would suffer. And they say the rule is needed to protect wildlife, control flooding and cleanse polluted stormwater – all benefits that result from protecting wetlands. It also would restore some authority lost as a result of Supreme Court decisions, say proponents of the rule.

Wilson joined a lawsuit filed Tuesday by eight other states in federal court in Georgia. States in the suit challenging the federal rule also include West Virginia, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Utah and Wisconsin. They say the rule violates existing federal law.

Similar legal complaints have been filed by other states. Eighteen other states are involved in those actions.

South Carolina is dotted with hundreds of thousands of acres of isolated wetlands that can get in the way of development projects. The state also has many miles of intermittent streams, which flow only part of the year.

Whether the federal government could protect small isolated wetlands and intermittent streams came into question 14 years ago. At the time, the U.S. Supreme Court eased federal authority over these soggy areas, largely leaving the responsibility to states such as South Carolina – which has not acted to fill the gap.

As a result, developers are able to more easily fill isolated wetlands today than they were prior to the 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has declared at least 3,700 acres of isolated wetlands in South Carolina open for development through the years. Isolated wetlands are those considered not connected to rivers or other water bodies. The federal and state governments limit development in other types of wetlands, such as river swamps and salt marshes.

Wilson, however, said the EPA is going too far. Too many average citizens’ property would be regulated under the proposed rule, he contends.

“The EPA’s proposed expansion would bring many roadside ditches, small ponds on family farms, water features on golf courses, and storm water systems under extremely burdensome federal regulation,’’ he said.

Wilson and Gov. Nikki Haley ripped the federal plan last fall. They wrote a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Army asking the federal government to abandon the rule. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are the primary federal agencies involved in wetlands regulation.

This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 4:03 PM.