President Biden and Freshwater
The Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) has joined the America the Beautiful Freshwater Challenge announced on April 23rd, 2024 by the White House. We will do our part to contribute to this program’s success of restoring and protecting freshwater resources across the United States. The Biden Administration can make a reasonable claim to have done more for freshwater resources than any recent administration. This initiative and three years of efforts to prioritize clean water and the protection, conservation, and restoration of nature provide the basis for that claim to us. Among the most important programs and initiatives for freshwater are the following:
After working with 45 other nations to launch a global Freshwater Challenge, the Administration has now recommitted to a more than 30-year, bipartisan commitment to no net loss of wetlands, which we believe has been the single most effective policy in making use of habitat offsets to increase wetlands impact avoidance, finance wetlands restoration, and drive fair pricing for protecting and restoring one of the most important ecosystem types in America.
New goals just announced are a first for America. The White House has set a huge new goal to restore and protect 8 million acres of wetlands in 6 years, and to restore and protect 100,000 miles of rivers and streams over the same period. Given an estimated net loss of approximately 600,000 acres of wetlands during the 2010s, this would be an almost 10-fold increase. Quantitative goals like these are a hallmark of good public policy because they create accountability around whether the country, agencies, and politicians are or are not making good on a promise.
Record-breaking federal funding is flowing to incredible freshwater restoration projects like the Santa Clara Pueblo’s project to restore riparian corridor connectivity to 40 stream miles across a deeply-affected landscape following three wildfire events, post-fire flooding and nearby development. The funding match for this project and dozens of other tribal-led restoration projects was supported in full by Native Americans in Philanthropy, which represented an incredible partnership between a tribally led non-profit and federal grant program. IRA and IIJA funding is supporting a rapid increase in the capacity of partners across the country to expand a restoration economy that is full of well-paid jobs in the creation of more nature-based solutions. For example, one sector of wetland restoration work has an average salary almost 70% higher than the average oil and gas job.
The scaled-up federal agency support and funding for restoring streams for endangered fish like Pacific salmon to return to spawning grounds and access to critical rearing and foraging habitat is long overdue. This support is being leveraged by the Interagency Fish Passage Task Force which represents a shining example of government agency coordination around a major ecological restoration initiative, where funding, expertise, and partnerships are coming together to drive real, fast solutions. Their Fish Passage Portal is a valuable resource for restoration practitioners, government agency leaders and tribes.
New rules from the Fish & Wildlife Service will simplify pathways for landowner agreements to protect species. Historically, species protection and conservation tools like Candidate Conservation Agreements and Safe Harbor Agreements have been underutilized by landowners. The new rules will expand opportunities for proactive conservation.
The Administration’s support for all 50 states’ Clean Water Revolving Loan Funds totals approximately $6 billion so far and will be part of the biggest 4-year investment in upgrading wastewater treatment, dealing with sewer overflows, and water utility-led green infrastructure deployment in decades.
The Fish & Wildlife Service’s species mitigation rules incorporated revisions that (1) enshrine “no net loss” as a goal, (2) formally commit to hold all forms of mitigation to equivalent standards, and (3) recognize tribal sovereignty and propose alternatives to conservation easements to land protection for tribal conservation bank sponsors.
The Natural Resource Conservation Service has used performance-based payments to compensate farmers in Iowa, Vermont, and Maryland based on their real reductions of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the Mississippi, Lake Champlain, and the Chesapeake Bay. These include EPIC’s partnership with oyster farms in the Chesapeake, through which we are paying for the nutrient pollution that oysters remove from the Bay. These payments for results through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program are some of the best examples of targeting federal conversation dollars to where they can provide the most bang for the buck.
The Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule will put conservation of clean water and other key natural resources on the same footing as other uses of public lands, making an honest commitment to the multi-use mandate those lands are supposed to have had for a century. And that rule creates new leasing opportunities for restoration of public lands that could incentivize third party-led mitigation of projects that harm federal lands by establishing projects nearby that more than offset those harms.
While the US Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision reduced the scope of federal protections of wetlands and streams, stripping protections for 60 million acres of wetlands and streams, the US Army Corps of Engineers last month emphasized agency commitments to take action to protect those waters. The agency committed to prioritize civil works restoration projects on aquatic resources no longer protected after the Sackett decision.
The Biden Administration has laid out a roadmap for accelerating building Nature-based Solutions that protect drinking water, forests, coastal habitats and biodiversity while preventing disastrous flooding and deadly extreme heat. Additionally, the White House released guidance on Accounting for Ecosystem Services in Benefit-Cost Analysis. Recognizing Nature-based Solutions represents an important shift toward large restoration projects receiving federal funding and determining whether those restoration and resilience projects rely primarily on gray or green infrastructure.