Plan to ease gulf wetlands rules scaled back

'Part of the compromise'
Halle said he and fellow builders have no intention of harming environmentally sensitive lands and was glad to see tidal areas and sites near them excluded. “That’s something that I agree needs to be protected,” he said. “To me, that should be part of the compromise on this, that we do stay away from those type areas.”

But Grimes and other environmentalists warned that accommodating development by easing the rules at all threatens to bring even worse flooding to the region in the future and is not necessary to rebuild housing.

“The Corps did make some improvements to the original proposal, but really missed the overall point,” Grimes said. “Coastal Mississippi has significant flooding problems when it rains, let alone when hurricanes come ashore. I think once again this demonstrates that the Corps is more interested in permitting wetland loss than protecting wetlands.”

Mississippi Sierra Club Chairman Howard Page agreed. “We want more regulatory oversight,” not less, he said. “We want them to start doing their job. They’re completely looking at this wrong.

“There’s no reason to get a wetlands permit to restore a building that was destroyed in Katrina,” Page said. “The reason they’re going to wetlands has nothing to do with rebuilding from Katrina, it has everything to do with economic opportunism,” because the land is cheaper.

Gulfport Community activist Derrick Evans said the Corps is motivated by politics. Despite changing the rules to please developers, the new proposal would exempt Evans’ neighborhood in Gulfport, the Turkey Creek watershed, from the fast-track process. Evans believes that’s because the group of which he is executive director, Turkey Creek Initiatives, has fought long and hard to make the point that improper development in the area has exacerbated flooding.

“They knew Turkey Creek was a squeaky wheel,” Evans said. “I guess they figured we’d shut up and go home, but if we were right here, we must be right about something across the entire area.” So while he’s “very glad” for the exemption, he said his group will still fight the new proposal.

The Corps’ Robbins said Turkey Creek was exempted because of “an ongoing federal study” on flooding issues in the area, not because of political pressure.

Halle of the home builders’ group said it would be impossible to please the environmentalists. “What I’ve found is there’s no compromise with them,” he said.

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