Across the country, marshes, swamps and bogs quietly soak up flood water and filter pollutants. Ecologists agree they are one of the best natural defenses against climate change. But after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, more than half of the country’s 118 million acres of wetlands, according to estimates from the environmental firm Earthjustice, will effectively no longer have federal protection from developers and polluters.
Illinois, which has lost 90% of its wetlands since 1818, is among the more vulnerable states with no state-level protections for wetlands on private property. Those on public land are still protected.
“Right now we’re in the process of building up our troops,” said Eliot Clay, state programs director at the advocacy group Illinois Environmental Council. While the Supreme Court’s decision will take down federal barriers to developing farmland and constructing buildings in certain places, eventually flooding and erosion will follow, harming farmland, residential areas and transportation infrastructure, Clay said.
“This decision by the Supreme Court was a really big win for those who believe that individual property rights are more important than the collective status of a piece of property,” said Clay. “They can celebrate that in the short term, but people aren’t going to be celebrating those kinds of decisions when it starts impacting their actual day-to-day way of life.”
Wetland protections have been introduced in the General Assembly before, most recently in 2020. They faced challenges from lobbying groups for farmers and builders, which ultimately won out.
Clay, who has been organizing numerous environmental groups into action since the ruling, predicts they’ll face another uphill battle but remains optimistic. “A big argument that was brought up against (the 2020 bill), especially from the business community, was that we don’t need to do this in Illinois because it already exists in federal law. Now that that card has been thrown out, they don’t have that argument anymore,” said Clay.
Wetlands are remarkable carbon sinks, filtering out pollutants before they can make it to major waterways and containing 20% to 30% of global soil carbon despite only making up 5% to 8% of land surface.
Illinois is one of the biggest contributors to nutrient pollution that flows from the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone with chronic algae blooms and near-zero oxygen levels. The state’s negative impact is bound to increase without state-level regulations, Clay said.
In Illinois, environmental groups are ready to get to work. “Over the next few months, as we start getting our game plan together for the next legislative session, we’re gonna need to think through what we need in Illinois,” Clay said. “We’re really going to try to craft a bill that, at least from a Midwestern standpoint, puts Illinois in the lead in terms of wetland protection.”
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