"U.S. officials said on Friday they would offer higher payments to certain owners of environmentally sensitive farm land if they idle it in a conservation program instead of using it to grow crops."
"The world's largest phosphate miner has cut a deal with the environmental groups that sued it two years ago to block its plans to dig up thousands of acres of wetlands. In exchange for allowing mining to proceed near Fort Meade in Hardee County, Mosaic Fertilizer will buy a 4,400-acre ranch and donate it for use as a new state park."
"A team of Louisiana scientists is laying the groundwork for creating a new carbon storage industry that could both reduce the effects of global warming and rebuild wetlands along the state’s coastline. Sarah Mack, founder of New Orleans-based Tierra Resources, and Louisiana State University wetlands scientists John W. Day and Robert Lane have come up with a method for measuring the molecules of carbon removed from the atmosphere by the soils and plants that are created with coastal restoration projects."
Artificially created wetlands may not really compensate well enough for the loss of natural wetlands they replace.
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"To many, it’s a familiar scenario: a strip mall suddenly pops up in what was once a desolate quagmire or boggy boondock.
"The farm bill is a favorite target of budget-cutters and those looking to reduce the size of government, particularly because about 80% of it encompasses food stamps and nutritional programs. However, it also contains some of the most successful conservation programs in our nation’s history, and those are now threatened with the ax, including the popular 1985 Conservation Reserve Program."
"U.S. EPA faced a hostile Supreme Court today as the agency defended its authority to issue compliance orders under the Clean Water Act without allowing an immediate hearing on the underlying issue."
"The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in a case near and dear to EPA haters. It would seem to be a David-and-Goliath case that pits a middle-class American couple trying to build their dream home against the Environmental Protection Agency. But the couple, Michael and Chantell Sackett, is backed by a veritable who's who in American mining, oil, utilities, manufacturing and real estate development, as well as groups opposed to government regulation."
"In a cause celebre for the right, an Idaho couple seeks a hearing on an EPA warning that a dry lot for their dream home is protected 'wetlands.'"
"A federal appeals court today rejected nearly all the claims environmentalists had made against an Army Corps of Engineers decision to issue a permit for a major development in Florida wetlands."
"The state of Louisiana has refused to sign off on a Coast Guard-BP plan to transition from a cleanup program to a long-term recovery in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, charging that the plan leaves coastal beaches and wetlands vulnerable to continued oil contamination with no guarantee that BP will be required to pay for future cleanups."
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