Environmentalists Criticize Bush Over Wetlands Agreement

WASHINGTON — Environmentalists on Wednesday charged the Bush Administration with softening a federal interagency agreement on wetland protection and backing away from a commitment to protect the environmentally sensitive lands.

The agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, announced Wednesday by the EPA, outlines procedures a developer must take and what compensation must be provided when seeking to develop a wetland area.

Although the policy statement was agreed upon tentatively last November, its final approval has been stalled since early January because of a dispute on the wording of the proposal and its impact on development, particularly oil exploration in Alaska.

Robert Ervin, an attorney with the National Wildlife Federation, said the original wetlands policy provided certainty that developers would have to compensate for wetland losses, but the revised policy was riddled with “potentially large loopholes.”