Wetlands Law Leaves Plans High and Dry : Development: A new definition of protected habitats is pending. Some owners are fighting to have their properties excluded from controls.

CAMBRIDGE, Md. —  Peggy Reigle strides across a five-acre field that is sprinkled with dandelions, cedars and white pines. She is indignant that the federal government should call this a wetland.

“We want them to reinsert the word wet in the definition of wetlands,” Reigle said. “The system has gone out of whack. The definition has gone astray and the policy has gone crazy.”

Reigle, a retired corporate executive who moved from New York to Maryland’s rural Eastern Shore in 1988, last year organized the Fairness to Landowners Committee to oppose federal wetlands regulations she and her neighbors consider unreasonable.

She is not the only one who is angry. Oil, timber and building interests also have been lobbying the White House and Congress for scaled-down controls over what might be called dry wetlands.

Many environmentalists fear that those groups are about to get what they want most--a narrower official definition of what property is wet enough to qualify as a wetland.

Under the Clean Water Act, it is illegal to discharge fill or pollutant into a wetland without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Almost any construction--even if dirt is just moved around on a work site--qualifies as a discharge.

Before issuing such a permit, the Corps must explore with the landowner how the proposed project might avoid the wetland altogether, or how to minimize the damage. A developer can be required to construct a new wetland somewhere else to compensate for any loss of habitat.

The permit process can be long and costly, but environmentalists say the answer is to expedite the handling of applications, not to redefine wetlands.

“The National Wildlife Federation cannot stand by silently while millions of wetlands acres are defined away under the guise of ‘technical revisions,’ ” said the federation’s president, Jay D. Hair.

The changes could have widespread impact--not just on the Chesapeake Bay (40% of eastern Maryland is considered wetlands under the current rules). The disputed land is found in all coastal states and many inland regions where soil is sometimes saturated, without being visibly flooded.

Such lands “may not have surface water year-round, but they still provide important habitat to hundreds of species of wildlife,” said Linda Winter of the Izaak Walton League of America, a conservation group based in Arlington, Va.

The not-so-wet wetlands also serve as flood-control zones and filter out pollution before it reaches ground water, she said.

The term wetlands means swamps, bogs and other areas that are covered with water or saturated at least part of the year. Such areas used to be considered worthless, and the government encouraged draining them for farming or development.

More than half of the original wetlands of the United States have been destroyed--not counting Alaska, where the vast tundra is also classified as wetlands.

The Maryland field that Reigle was visiting belongs to her neighbors, Harry and Susan Wehr, who had hoped to sell it to a housing developer to finance their retirement. Before 1989, when the current definition was established, the government had not considered this to be wetlands.

The Wehrs were surprised last year to learn they would have to get a permit, and that the Army Corps of Engineers could make them change their plans or refuse them permission to build.

The Wehrs’ permit application has been pending for several months, Reigle said. They may be in luck, if the new definition of wetlands removes their property from protected status.

Along with the Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Soil Conservation Service share responsibility for wetlands.

For months, officials of the four agencies have been rewriting the field manual that is used to determine whether a property is a wetland.

The current manual sets out three criteria: The soil must be “hydric,” showing it has been saturated in the past; it should support characteristic wetlands vegetation, and water must lie within 18 inches of the surface at least seven days a year.

Lobbyists on both sides expect the revised definition to tighten the vegetation rule and to require that moisture lie closer to the surface for a longer period of time. EPA officials caution that it will be difficult to be sure how much land would be redefined until the new rules are in use.

Sean McIlheny of the EPA said the redefinition effort is nearly finished, with the result likely to be made public this month.

But the definition dispute could just set the scene for a full revision of wetlands law in Congress.

The Clean Water Act regulates discharges of dirt or pollutants into wetlands, but it is not comprehensive. Draining, excavating or channeling wetlands is not covered by federal law, although such work is regulated in some states.

One idea, opposed by most environmental groups, would establish several classes of wetlands, with greater protection afforded those considered most valuable, and would require the government to compensate landowners if wetlands restrictions reduced property values.