We are a bunch of tech geeks, coders and designers. EPA, Corps Propose Changes in Wetlands Rules »
0
Federal agencies have proposed to change their requirements for what developers must do to make up for wetlands destroyed by construction projects. One result, agency officials say, could be to encourage use of “mitigation banks,” wetlands tracts that are preserved or newly created that can be used to offset lost wetlands elsewhere.
Benjamin Grumbles, the Environmental Protection Agency’s assistant administrator for water, says the new regulation, announced March 27, “takes us to the next level” in wetlands conservation and restoration. He says the rule, proposed jointly by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, will accelerate the pace of restoring wetlands, increase accountability and provide “clear, results-oriented standards” for replacing lost tracts.
George Dunlop, deputy assistant Army secretary for civil works, says that the new rule doesn’t increase or decrease the amount of required wetlands mitigation. But he says it does mark a change from the current “top down, one size fits all” system to a “compliance-based as opposed to an enforcement-based” program.
advertisement
When developers seek a permit under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act to dredge or fill wetlands, they must follow a three-part sequence: minimize wetlands losses, mitigate such losses or, when damage is unavoidable, compensate for it by creating a new wetland somewhere else, buying mitigation bank “credits” or paying a fee.
A Corps-EPA information sheet says that “compensatory mitigation” for lost wetlands now has varying standards and criteria. The agencies add, “The [new] rule establishes a single set of standards which all forms of [wetlands] compensation must satisfy that is based on better science, increased public participation and innovative market-based tools.”
Grumbles says the proposed rule requires developers seeking a permit to provide regulators with a specific wetlands mitigation plan and then be subject to monitoring for five years.
If a builder chooses to use a mitigation bank, Grumbles says the proposal spells out standards and criteria for a bank’s scope and a process to ensure that it is ecologically sound. If a developer decides to pay a compensatory fee, there would be much more accountability required, he adds.
Craig Denisoff, president of the National Mitigation Banking Association, said, “These regulations can improve the Section 404 program for all participants–the permit applicants, the mitigation providers, the federal agencies, and most importantly, the physical environment.”
The proposed rule is posted on the EPA’s web site.
New Home Sales, Median Prices Fall in Feb. »
0
New home sales fell by the biggest amount in almost nine years in February while home prices declined for a fourth straight month, raising concerns that the once high-flying housing market could be in for a rougher-than-expected landing.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that sales of new single-family homes dropped by 10.5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 1.08 million homes.
It was the second straight monthly decline, following a 5.3 percent fall in January, and marked the biggest one-month drop since April 1997.
The slowdown in sales further depressed home prices with the median price for new homes sold in February falling to $230,400, 1.6 percent below the January level. It marked the fourth straight month that the median, or midpoint for home prices, had fallen since hitting an all-time high of $243,900 in October.
Analysts, who had been forecasting a much more moderate drop of around 2 percent in February sales, said the big decline and downward revisions to sales activity in the previous three months could be signaling that housing will slow more this year than had been expected.
“The new home market looks like it is starting to stagger,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisers, a Pennsylvania forecasting firm. “Bubbles do burst, they really do.”
A crash in home prices is seen as one of the biggest threats to economic growth. Some analysts are worried that five straight years of record home sales, fueled by the lowest mortgage rates in a generation, spurred a speculative fever in housing similar to the forces that created a bubble in stock prices in the late 1990s.
The bursting of the stock market bubble in early 2000 wiped out $7 trillion in paper wealth and contributed to pushing the country into a recession in 2001.
With mortgage rates being pushed higher as the Federal Reserve raises rates to fight inflation, the worry is that home sales will slow further and put more pressure on prices. In addition, homeowners who stretched to buy homes with adjustable rate mortgages could be forced into foreclosures if they cannot meet the higher Click here to read more »
