hello everyone welcome to our webinar i'm going to give it about 30 seconds for people to filter in thank you so much for joining us all right well good afternoon everyone and thanks so much for joining us today uh this is the 19th edition of our webinar series on the convergence of wetland science and tech my name is cameron davis and i'm the business development representative at ecobot um so today's topic is challenges and successes of state 404 assumption we've got a fantastic panel of experts with us today uh from states that have assumed that process florida michigan and new jersey so once we kick things off we're eager to have a two-way discussion so at the bottom of your zoom window you should see a q a button if you'd like to ask any questions that you'd want to answer by the panel go ahead and put them in there and we'll field them as we have time um well let's get to our host who is my colleague with nearly two decades of experience as a wetland scientist and also the co-founder and chief scientist at ecobot jeremy shavey i'll pass it off to him great thanks cameron and welcome back everyone and for those of you who are joining us for the first time [Music] welcome to our webinar this has been a great series that we kicked off at the beginning of the pandemic and uh we've just had a really wonderful time pulling together various federal and state agencies as well as some tribes uh consulting organizations uh tech and software providers it's an exciting place to hang out to see where things are going in the 21st century and what's alive with respect to policy and the regulation of those policies so again we have a fantastic panel today and uh looking forward to the sharing but as usual i'd like to start off our webinars with just a little perspective a little reminder of perhaps why many of us are in this particular industry and in the sciences in the first place i know for myself that as a young child i fell in love with nature and indeed in the deep world and uh conservation is always at the heart of many of the reasons why i'm moving forward so excited to be with this great group today and continue in that journey and so the topic today challenges and successes of state four for assumption figured it was really good way to just kind of cue this up here's some of the questions that we hope that we can answer today through some of our presentations as well as through some of our discussion um [Music] why why are some why are some of the states why have they assumed the 404 process i think we're going to get a better understanding of that both from michigan and from new jersey today how does it work what does that look like um and why are these programs successful and i think brenda is also going to talk a little bit more about what some of the other states as well as other agencies that are considering uh the assumption of 404 and also just to set this up why is this important to regulators as well as consultants in the modern world where we're having roving wotus roles continuously changing over a very short time period so just to kind of tear us up here today so our synopsis the flow of a webinar i'm going to introduce the presenters and the panelists here momentarily then we're going to hear from from ian garwood for the michigan assumption and then for new jersey assumption we're going to hear both from susan lockwood and ryan anderson from dep um and then brenda is going to be presenting other four or four assumption resources that are available to your states and tribal organizations i'm going to give a very brief update on where things are with ecobot and then talk a little bit about our webinar coming up in february and we should have at least 15 to 20 minutes at the end for questions and answers and so now that we're a few minutes in i want to take this opportunity to bring your attention if you take your cursor if you've got us in full screen mode you should be able to take your cursor and hover over the bottom of the screen and you'll see two different places down there where you can post discussion for general discussion please use the chat bubble you can either direct something specifically to one of the presenters and panelists or to everyone but if you have a question that you would like answered in our panel discussion at the end please insert that into the section where it says q and a and we will curate those questions as the presentation continues so um i'd like to introduce our uh our panel for the day so todd losey up in michigan worked for a nice nice winder and todd and i have been working together on and off for a few years and todd was a big part of helping get this webinar together here today so hats off to you todd hope you're staying warm up there in michigan um todd has also introduced me to ann garwood who is going to be presenting from the michigan perspective from eagle she's the wetlands unit supervisor i know she also supervises streams and i think lakes as well sorry i couldn't fit that all in there and um otherwise there people have had to have their mic with their looking glasses out here so i'm very much looking forward to what you have to present today and she works with the 4 4 reporting side of things at eagle going over to new jersey with dep got susan lockwood who has as she says has been with uh with the wetlands program there since the beginning and helped to actually put together the new jersey assumption package from inception and so in the meantime she's been helping promulgate and refine the program ever since ryan anderson also with new jersey dep runs their jurisdictional determination and permitting program and he's been with with dep for 21 years plus primarily working with freshwater wetlands i also want to give a shout out to brendan zolitch who works with association of state wetland managers as the senior policy analyst she's going to be giving us a great short presentation today focused on tools that are available for uh 404 assumption and brenda and i have collaborated on other projects and webinars in the past as well so brenda thanks for being back with us the same thing goes out to carrie mcnutt with ect carrie joined us back in the late summer early fall when we had the 404 assumption webinar with florida dep so carrie's coming in from the consulting side of things and give us a little bit of her perspective and update in and available for questions in respect to florida at the end of the presentation so without further ado um i would like to go ahead and invite and to take over the uh the presentation here and and again just let me know when you're ready for me to advance the slides sure go ahead go ahead and start um hi everyone as jeremy mentioned i'm ann garwood i'm supervisor of the wetlands lakes and streams unit in eagle i work in michigan and we do administer the section 404 program in michigan i'll i'll talk a little bit about how that works and um some of the successes and challenges with our program go ahead so just to put things in perspective and kind of build on what jeremy was saying about why we do this um in michigan we do protect the water resources division in general does protect four great lakes over three thousand miles of great lakes shoreline we have over eleven 11 000 inland lakes 36 000 river miles over six and a half million acres of wetlands and we also protect groundwater resources um that does we like to sort of start out with this slide and think about what it is that we're doing in this program and the other programs we run in the state um i do want to start out the presentation by pointing out that michigan's wetland protection act that we have and that we administer in our state was written specifically to support state assumption of the program and that was the intention of the statute when it was first developed go ahead so within our wetlands protection statute the michigan legislature clearly recognized the benefits of wetlands and in our statute they're identified as functions and values right in the legislative findings incorporated into what we call part 303 wetlands protection and this language in the green box is directly from our statute it says a loss of a wetland may deprive the people of the state of some or all of the following benefits to be derived from a wetland and that includes flood and storm control wildlife habitat protection of subsurface water resources and recharging groundwater supplies pollution treatment erosion control and nursery grounds and sanctuaries for fish and we did feel that it was important to have these functions and values identified in the statute to sort of always bring back what it is that these wetlands are serving for the people of the state go ahead this slide shows sort of a general timeline of michigan's program michigan's in the lakes and streams act which is our state statute protecting inland lakes and streams was first enacted in 1972 followed by in 1977 the federal clean water act was amended to allow state administration of section 404 programs then in 1979 michigan's wetland protection protection act was first passed with the intention of assuming the section 404 program as i mentioned in 1983 was when michigan and epa first signed our memorandum of agreement which has later been revised in 2011 and that that agreement did provide approval of assumption of the section 404 program in michigan and then in 1984 michigan and the army corps of engineers signed our memo memorandum of agreement designating the navigable waters over which the section 404 program is retained by the army corps of engineers thus michigan's full assumption of the federal program was launched in 1984. go ahead just to give you sort of a visual in michigan the army corps of engineers retains jurisdiction over traditionally navigable waters which includes the great lakes coasts connecting channels other waters connected to the great lakes where navigational conditions are maintained and the wetlands directly adjacent to these waters activities in these waters require a joint permit application we do share an application with the army corps of engineers so applicants in michigan only fill out the one application even if they need a permit from both the army corps of engineers and the state of michigan go ahead so we maintain consistency with the 404 program at the federal level by implementing state statutes and in particular we administer part 303 wetlands protection part 301 in the lakes and streams protection and the administrative rules for those state statutes which are under our natural resources and environmental protection act in the state level the language in these statutes coincides with the language from the clean water act and the 404 b1 guidelines the compensatory mitigation rule and definitions in the state program regulations and the 404 program definitions go ahead so michigan statutes do have clearly defined regulated activities um in general these include deposit or permit the placement oops sorry go back include regulation of the deposition of permitting the placement of fill material in wetlands dredging removing or permitting the removal of soil or minerals from wetlands construction operation or maintenance of uses or development in wetlands and draining surface water from wetlands um we have similar language under part 301 for inland lakes and streams but i did only have the slide in this presentation for wetlands but it's essentially the same activities dredging filling placement of structures drainage those kinds of things in michigan a permit from eagle actually provides multiple different authorizations so a single permit issued by our program would carry with it the 404 authorization except in those areas where the army corps retains jurisdiction as i mentioned it would also carry with it the 401 certification for water quality in michigan carries with the coastal zone certification if it falls within the coastal zone boundaries we do incorporate the screening and coordination with state and federal endangered species programs as part of our review and screening and coordination with the federal historic preservation program as well go ahead um the structure of how our permits of the different levels of our permits is very similar to the federal level as well we have three levels of permits general permits minor projects and individual permits both gp and mps can be issued for up to five years these are expedited processes for those projects which have individual and cumulative minor impacts under both 301 and 303 these are roughly similar to the nationwide permits the regional general permits and the individual permits issued by the army corps of engineers they're not identical but they're very similar and they have very similar categories go ahead we also have um a definition in our moa with epa of those projects which require additional epa review um and i have some bullet points which simplify this it's a little bit more complex but essentially this includes our draft general permits and minor projects they're both considered general permits projects which have major discharges which are defined with certain quantities and impact amounts discharges which are located in proximity to a public water supply intake discharges within critical areas which are identified under state or federal laws those projects which have a likelihood to impact federal tne species those projects which are likely to impact waters of another state or tribe and those projects which involve known toxic pollutants and toxic amounts essentially this is the priority pollutants list with epa go ahead our permitting program our application process and the permitting program is now administered through an online database called my waters oops sorry about that go back my slides must have had an auto scroll on them there it is this is a web-based application um it it is used for all the different permits offered by the water resources division and not just the 404 applications but it's a web-based system that anyone can access it serves both external customers as well as our internal staff we all use the same database and the general public is able to see quite a bit of information on here as well uh it first went live in august of 2015 and this database actually replaced over 25 existing separate databases that had been being used in the water resources division this online system is used for permits inspections financial reporting compliance issues and it's sort of a one-stop shop for all of those all of those things it also allows the public to view applications and public notice materials documents issue permits things like that so it's a it's a really useful system go ahead just to give you an idea um these numbers were run a couple years ago so they may be slightly out of date but they're pretty close and we we pretty much use them as well michigan averages about five thousand permit applications per year that we process the average time for determining whether or not an application is complete is around 18 days and the average processing time over all of those applications is about 41 days however it is sort of commensurate with the complexity of the project so the smaller simple projects tend to be processed quite a bit faster the large complex projects do take longer than that um we have around 82 full-time employees administrating this program at any given time and the permit program costs around 12.3 million dollars per year uh only of which about 20 is covered by the fees for our program go ahead so we have a consolidated permit processing as i mentioned earlier it includes us just a one single permit application and a single fee but we simultaneously review under not just wetlands leaks and stream statutes but any other applicable state statutes including floodplains dam safety shorelands great lakes and critical dunes this allows us to sort of address state priorities as well so the state 404 permits are issued under state law we weigh heavily in the language of how we determine decisions in michigan public trust responsibilities and riparian rights and the policies and procedures are specific to state needs while remaining federally consistent go ahead so some of the benefits in michigan's program are that michigan does have permit processing timeline deadlines that are mandated by statutes go back one more for example our statutes require that the department make a decision within 60 or 90 days of receipt of a complete application under the wetland statute and the inland lakes and streams statute or within 150 days if a public hearing is held and we have 30 days to determine administrative completeness in that process as well go ahead this also offers effective resource protection in michigan we have about six and a half million acres of wetlands in the state prior to european settlement michigan contained over 10.7 million acres of wetland but that had dropped to around 6.5 million acres just by 1978.
however since the passage of michigan's wetland protection laws in 1979 the rate of wetland loss has declined dramatically the total decline of wetlands since 1978 is estimated at around 41 000 acres the rate of decline slowed to approximately 1600 acres of loss per year between 1978 and 98 and slowed even further to only around 1100 acres of loss per year between 1998 and 2005. go ahead oh that was my last slide so we do believe that our program offers effective resource protection and includes um some cost and time savings and simplicity for applicants in michigan thank you anne and uh thank you also for the surprise uh loaded slide changes on me there i was like sorry about that kept me on my toes i was like wow is this next one going to change but thank you very much for this this great presentation it seems like a very streamlined process i'm looking forward to discussing more shortly but let's continue in our story here next we're going to jump to the eastern seaboard and take a look at new jersey's assumption of the 404 process and so susan and ryan i'm going to hand it over to you and again just let me know when you're ready for me to progress a slide and hopefully there's no trick slides in this one shouldn't be um every time i hear michigan's presentation i realize again how similar our programs are except for the fact that of course our state is much smaller so next slide please and we can go to the next one as well [Music] i always i always like to start with the fact that new jersey's most densely populated state in the nation and as a result there have been a lot of pressures and a lot of environmental issues that have occurred in new jersey in advance of what's going on in other states and as a result we have a very vocal and active grassroots environmental movement and they were responsible next slide for talk about i'm focused on the freshwater wetlands act but we had a coastal wetlands law that was passed in 1970 our coastal zone management program happened a few years after that so freshwater wetlands at that time was sort of the only resource that wasn't we'd had a stream protection program since the 1950s so freshwater wetlands was sort of the only resource important resource that didn't get attention until until the 80s so the freshwater wetlands protection act was passed in 1987 and like what you just heard from michigan the intent was again to preserve the purity integrity of freshwater wetlands because of the importance of them and right in the purpose of the statute was the statement that the state should expeditiously assume the permit jurisdiction from the army corps so perhaps they were looking at michigan and agreed that if we were going to move forward with this that it was going to be most efficient if the state also had assumed the federal permitting process next slide so the law was passed july 1st 1987 it gave us one year to put our wetland regulations together and then we also protect wetlands transition areas which is a buffer area adjacent to the wetlands and it gave us an extra year to come up with the regulations for our buffers or transition areas next slide when we began the process of looking at assumption it was very important to again like michigan you have to decide what areas the state can have sold jurisdiction over and what areas of the state have to be shared and retained by the corps so when we looked at that again the delaware river again because of its title it's also the border with state of pennsylvania so it's a shared resource so that would be retained by the core greenwood lake is actually right between the state of new jersey in the state of new york so that's another interstate water and as a result that had to be retained by the core and of course we are a tidal state so we of course have the atlantic ocean on our eastern border so basically the idea was you know putting those resources aside how far inland would the core retain jurisdiction and the determination was made that they would retain jurisdiction within a thousand feet of the otter of the ordinary high water mark of those water bodies and of course they would retain jurisdiction over all of those water bodies and anything subject to the ebb and flow of the tide the determination of a thousand feet somewhat was correlated with what the core considered adjacent when they did their own determinations of how to regulate wetlands and you know waters and wetlands adjacent there too so it's somewhat um correlated with that determination the core had already been making and also we were doing mapping at the time and it was uh i think that our mapping was one inch is a thousand feet so it was also a good mapping technique to be able to identify those waters next slide again as michigan had to do we had to have a memorandum of agreement with the epa and basically identify those categories of reviews that epa would have oversight of so we basically i think next slide there's a list of major discharges right in the existing regulations for assumption we of course had to have all of those categories many of which michigan folks just outlined for you and then these were the categories that new jersey added on um that are unique to the state so basically um filling of five or more acres of wetlands a significant reduction in the ecological commercial recreational value of five or more acres of wetlands culverts longer than 100 feet and the channelization of more than 500 feet of a river stream were deemed to be impacts that were of significance and therefore should have epa oversight next slide again when we were when the state law was passed there were two areas of the state that were listed as exempt from jurisdiction we could not retain those exempt areas because assumption requires that a state regulate all waters of the state unless for some reason they're not assumable so we had the hackensack meadowlands which is up in the northeastern part of the state and we had the pinelands which is in the southern portion of the state when we evaluated the waters and the hackensack meadowlands those are right by those are title basically tidal waters and wetlands adjacent to tidal waters so the determination was made that there really was nothing in the hackensack meadowlands that was going to be assumable so the hackensack meadowlands to this day remains exempt from the state law because the corps has jurisdiction there and our state statute said the only reason we'd get jurisdiction there is if it was necessary to to assume on the federal program the pinelands area however was a different story pretty much from the day that the state said it wanted to assume epa said what are you going to do in the pine lands because that area is inland and it's fresh water wetlands some some some areas have some tidal influence but we did have to assume that area the reason the pinelands area is important is because it's a national reserve area it has so it already was under protection it has its own endangered species list it had its own regulatory program it had its own wetland delineation program so the idea was that in assuming that we should basically maintain their ability to continue to do everything they were doing but we had to make sure that we coordinated enough so that the epa was satisfied that we were had oversight so we put together a memorandum of understanding with the pinelands commission and basically the way that works is for smaller impacts like general permit type impacts the pylons commission does the actual review of those and reports to the state on how those reviews came out and anything larger a larger impact that would require an individual permit the state of new jersey dep still does those reviews in the pinelands the pinelands folks also do their own jurisdictional determinations because their definition of wetlands is more stringent than the state and federal definition of wetlands next slide so once we worked out you know how we would do things in the pylons and what was and was not assumable through the um working with the core we put our package together and we submitted it in 1993. the epa did what they had to do and was declared our application complete in about two weeks um after that point the u.s fish and wildlife service expressed concern that they did not have a direct role in the state's program although the state was a coordinating with the fish and wildlife service the fish and wildlife service was not satisfied that the the coordination process through epa was was enough they wanted direct coordination with the state so um while we were not required to do this the state sat down with the u.s fish and wildlife service and worked out a coordination process also through a memorandum of understanding that talked about and i think i have a slide later that talks more about how that process works so once we as you can see it was almost six months but once we worked out the um the process with the u.s fish and wildlife service they kind of withdrew their objections and within 48 hours we had our program approved from the from the time that we signed that extra mou with the fish and wildlife service and the epa and then our program became effective in 1994.
uh next slide um again a lady from michigan mentioned that you know we had a program they had a program before they assumed the federal program we also had a program that was operating from 1988 until assumption in 1994. so you know what does assumption do to change our program next slide um again we mentioned the major discharges so when applications come in we screen them internally for major discharges and automatically and immediately send anything that's classified as a major discharge to epa that then does the distribution between among the the core the fish and wildlife service and national marine fisheries if any of those agencies tell epa that they will provide a comment the state has to basically wait for that comment and can't move forward with the permit before we satisfy the comment there is a time frame and a time limit for those comments so that the state permitting process is not held up indefinitely next slide again because we work this out with the u.s fish and wildlife service we have an internal threatened endangered species unit they do the major and immediate screening of applications that may have the potential to affect federally listed threatened or endangered species we also sort of again because we're a smaller state we were able to identify all of the counties and all of the townships in the state that have for example an endangered plant species of federally listed um um swamp pink species so we we know when a project comes in if it's in one of those townships that we have to look at that to make sure that there's not swamp pink associated with the the the property in question so our end folks internally do the screening and a more intense screening um to see if there's the species of concern for with federal species and um and then if we believe that the application we get might have a potential to affect a federal species then they coordinate directly with the u.s fish and wildlife service and similarly to epa if the u.s fish and wildlife service intends to provide a comment or conditions we must wait for their feedback again there's a time frame and a time limit on how quickly they would do that next slide and the other thing we do and i guess uh the state of florida may be working on some of this now we do have to report t annually to epa um our deadline is is well i think the deadline might be actually september 30th but anyway that slide may be wrong when we report we give them statistics on how many permits how our coordination has gone with again we also coordinate with historic preservation office permitting activity in the pinelands as i mentioned any mitigation activities and any kind of enforcement actions we've taken as well next slide and at this point i will hand off to ryan to talk about some of the extras that our program provides that go above and beyond the federal program thanks sir um yeah so like sue said i'm just going to do some quick hits on some things that that deviate from the from the federal program um the first is that new jersey uses the 1989 federal manual for delineating wetlands we don't use the 87 or the regional supplements that have since replaced the original um you know there's good good things and bad things about about doing that um but one of the um one of the benefits is that we're not really tied to the federal lotus [Music] federal lotus uh definition so in recent years that's kind of been a bit of a benefit um you know we were able to regulate things like isolated wetlands um that's something that uh you know on the federal levels required a lot more analysis in order to do um our regulatory program itself is very very similar um it's generally uh we have general permits which are just like our nationwide permits we have uh individual permits which are also very similar to federal individual permits but one thing that we do have as sue mentioned is we have transition areas um so buffers to wetlands uh these buffers uh it's basically the upwind area that's that's adjacent to the wetland and you know here's kind of an example of what that buffer would look like the light yellow would be would be the buffer we have our own set of regulations as to what can and cannot occur within the buffers and and we also have a separate regulatory scheme that that goes along with that next slide um so this is an example of the three types of buffers that that's something to get the largest is 150 feet uh that's pretty much reserved for trout waters and routines species habitat we also have ordinary which is which is there is no buffer on ordinary resource value wetlands and those are really your ditches and your swales um your small isolated wetlands your base and stormwater basins that we've built up ones and then anything that doesn't meet one of those two categories is 50 feet next slide um so so the transitionary waivers are the term that we that we use for the permits so if you're only doing work within a transition area you're not touching the wetland then you would apply for transitionary waivers and we have we have several different types but the most common um is is what we call an averaging plan uh next slide so uh basically uh i think this is this might be like a animation see if you go forward if something pops up yeah keep going one more one more i didn't create this obviously all right so basically what what this is showing is that um for an averaging plan you take away a certain amount of acreage or square footage of a buffer which would be shown in purple there and you're replacing it with bumping out the transition area on the same wetland somewhere else you know that's kind of shown in the blue and then what we do is we have uh we have applicants deed restricts the compensation area from future from future disturbance um next slide now you can keep going until it there we go so uh one other actually one other deviation that i just thought of is that we also regulate clearing vegetation so um even if you're not removing uh stumps of trees and and resulting in discharge of fill we do regulate just even the trimming of vegetation within a wet one so that's it's a little more restrictive than in the clinical program um so we also believe that new jersey has a very strong program [Music] you know at this point i feel like our regulated public is used to use to the regulations they're used to the program and we rarely hear too many complaints about about it they're just it's part of doing business in new jersey so this is this is kind of just an example or kind of a shows do that do the regulations work so in uh fiscal year 20 so this was i guess our this past period but maybe the last report we did uh we we authorized 21 acres of wetland fill through our program and uh we tracked the size of wetlands that are on properties and you can kind of see it's just a fraction of the wetlands that are actually on properties so we feel that between the regulation of buffers and uh the pretty restrictive standards in our in our permits that we've done a pretty good job of protecting the resources i think that's it great thanks ryan it was fun playing catch up on your animations with you there yeah sorry about my of course my phone never rings but no problem all right so uh brenda zoltich is going to talk with us a little bit about assumption resources that are available and the oh there's there's our there's our swamp pink there susan we've got those down here in western north carolina up in the highland bogs as well one of my favorite plants we actually cultivated those at the highlands biological station when i worked there with the university of north carolina years and years ago so brenda i'm going to turn it over to you awesome thank you so much you can move on to the next slide aswm received an epa wetland program development grant several years ago now to talk about the assumption process to to think about how we can support states and tribes as they determine uh whether or not they want to assume and support them along that process one of our things that we thought was going to be in place was a new 404 g rule as you all know we still don't have a new 404g rule um and according to some some recent conversations it's still in the in the till shall we say and hopefully we will get one at some point but the reason that that's important is that we were really planning with this project to help states work through we were going to teach them about the new rule we were going to say what's possible what's not possible and then help work with them to to move along that path well obviously we're three years later now still without a rule but what happened as a result was really quite remarkable aswm brought together a work group of about 36 folks from all over the country from various different states and tribes and federal agencies and um and consultants and academia and and so forth and we had a fantastic work group um this this group that got together every single month we're looking at what it what it does assumption mean for folks what is happening with it currently what are the how do we fill gaps that are out there that people might want to fill with 404 what are the alternatives to 404 and out of that came a wide range of resources so we now have a 404 assumption page that has all these great resources on it and i've just got a couple minutes with you here today i just wanted to sort of go over what's there so we have the website there's some basic information there are links to epa's 404 g rule and epa guidance we kind of want it to be a little bit of a one-stop shop for for everything so we provide links we also have some frequently asked questions about uh about assumption we have a list of definitions um and that list of definitions obviously would have to be adapted for any other state but it gives you a really great idea of some of the lingo and once you delve into assumption world you will realize that there's a lot of terms uh there are acronyms um there are uh phrasal there's phraseology that you might want to use and our work group really got used to throwing those words around but when you first jump into it it's a little bit overwhelming so what we did was we had we took a glossary that florida developed as part of its package and we made that uh we we simplified we took out anything state specific and and made um some some more general uh language around it so if you're trying if you are delving into this you got your big toe uh into the swimming pool and you're like that's cold definitions list might help you get there we have a checklist which i'm going to talk about again in a second of assumption considerations for people who are again just starting to think about what they might need to do um i think that anyone who was in our work group that said that they were uh starting to pursue it it where do you start um it's a massive undertaking there are lots of resources that you need to bring to the table partnerships that you need to develop connections mousse you need to do a lot of major sort of detective work um and so two of the big tasks that you would have to do with assumption is document what waters are assumable in your state and also to conduct a regulatory crosswalk and so these two tasks are things that we delved into incredibly deeply we developed web resources we have some introductory documents that talk about what are the steps that you would need to go through we are not epa we are not guidance we are not a rule however we were able to pull together sort of lessons to le from peer-to-peer sharing kind of things that would be useful for you and probably the most beneficial thing because everybody is tight on time and recreating the wheel is just agonizing we provided a matrix of 135 assumption examples so everything from mousse to crosswalks to websites to smart guidance sheets and so forth that somebody who's starting to look into assumption and let's say you want to do you want to document your assumable waters we provide you with some guidance with some some information some considerations we also provide you with a webinar with different states sharing their experiences with that but then we also in this matrix provide examples of the assumable waters analyses that have been connected conducted already and links to those so rather than having to go back and figure out or create new relationships where you have to reach out to people these folks who were part of our work group were just incredibly generous with what they were willing to share and all of those are on aswm's website we also have links to other useful websites and we have a pdf of resource links next slide um as i mentioned one of the things that is really helpful i think is this a assumption checklist so um it talks about what are things you might need to think of as you're going forth uh how do you define your state and try or tribal goals for assumption how do you determine if there's public support uh for a comprehensive administration of a dredge and phil program by the state or tribe really thinking through the steps that you would need to go to to develop the political will to move forward as well as sort of the the legal and regulatory and administrative elements of that conducting an inventory of existing state and tribal statutes and regulations um under uh taking the side by side comparison there's that regulatory crosswalk identifying what gaps exist so from that comparison how do you go through and then figure out what do we need to fill identifying and securing funding mechanisms for the assumption program everybody wants to know how they're going to fund it and as you just heard from some of the states that have already talked you know fees don't necessarily cover the whole thing so what what is the system that you're going to create to do that and guaranteeing adequate public participation processes as well as identifying how a state and tribe will comply with other required federal laws uh some of which have already been mentioned next slide and then what i think what i've heard is incredibly useful i mean we as an organization at aswm learned a tremendous amount from our participants and as we developed these uh these webinars we learned a lot as well so i wanted to let you know that there's an archive of webinar recordings and powerpoints on the aswm website and that would be if you go to and click on our webinars and trainings you can click on um this uh the block that says assumption webinars next slide and so i just wanted to quickly highlight those things that are on our webinar so we have an assumption 101 so introducing you to the clean water act uh 404 uh program and letting you know that and understanding alternatives um state programmatic general permits an assumption of the 404 program um thinking about is assumption the right fit for us documenting assumable waters fantastic webinar with examples from everybody up and down who are considering it as well as um so we we looked at ideas from from michigan and new jersey florida which was just about to assume and then also some states that were really deeply exploring and had done assumable waters work in oregon and uh in minnesota um we talked about regulatory crosswalks which i've mentioned so another webinar really getting into depth about what did you do how did you approach it and so forth learning from others then kind of one of the most exciting outcomes for us what however you feel about florida's assumption we were pretty excited about it at aswm but florida's assumption process um we we were with them for a huge portion of it so we were able to help document through our webinar series and our documents and the matrix all the different things that they did um having institutional memory of what happened is always a really hard thing to do for a process so the fact that they were with us along the way uh i think is a wonderful uh way to carry on that institutional knowledge we talked about data management for the assumption of 404 program we heard from michigan mi waters we also have an additional webinar in our system about mi waters mitigation banking considerations um that was a great webinar that we held um and talking about you know what are the challenges for the state in thinking about that what do they want to assume and what they don't and what arrangements need to be in place and then really if you're interested in our project as a whole we had a webinar on the final findings next slide and this is my last slide here i just wanted to share that one of the things that was so fantastic about this work group and this project which we had not expected was that uh we also hit a pandemic in the middle of this so we we just had a great sort of community of all those people who had worked and were currently working on assumption so once a month we got together we were able to share regular updates it really removed that sense of isolation for those of you who are considering uh what's going on with assumption it's a kind of isolating process because nobody else is really doing it so we brought those few people who were together and they said it was really important for momentum we built on existing resources and were able to show what other states were doing and we created this network and that network is available to you if you are interested in participating we have lots of examples for you of people and and folks who would be willing to mentor um and so in the end we brought together uh michigan and new jersey and florida who you are probably very familiar with but then we also had engaged indiana that was in the process of looking at it not so much now i believe nebraska oregon and minnesota both uh are definitely still interested in assumption and then after the project we worked quite extensively for briefly but extensively with nevada and uh had contact with wisconsin who said that the materials that were available on our site were very useful to them um so i ask you you can turn to the next slide i have my information there um and uh if anybody's interested in learning or getting oriented to our materials we met with a whole bunch of lawyers from nevada who wanted to know what we had to offer and so forth and i can just walk you through that so that's my summary of what aswm has and as soon as a new 404g rule is out aswm will certainly be doing a hot topics webinar on it and we're actually in the process of planning a an update on where everybody is with assumption that was in the process during our project uh we're planning that for this fall that is where i'm at great thank you brenda always an honor to collaborate and aswm just has so many great resources available so certainly thank you for joining us here today i'm going to breeze through this really quickly for those of you who aren't familiar with ecobot it's a software platform that allows everyone to do their wetland assessments uh delineations monitoring etc in a digital platform and that also we partner with esri so that we've got great mapping functionality figure this is probably the exciting piece you know just where we're at as a couple of weeks ago just shy of 50 000 reports across the united states yeah it's been an exciting exciting journey and i look forward to seeing how this ecosystem of data will continue to build itself and how ecobot is helping both with conservation as well as with moving things forward in economic growth in the 21st century keeping those in balance and making sure everything is done within respect of the regulatory environment that we're in seen a lot of lot happening up there in michigan um pretty exciting stuff so the uh next webinar that we will have in february is going to be focused on uh habitat conservation plans specifically in respect to federal tne species and some of the prediction models that both federal agencies as well as the consulting world has put together in order to make that possible so with that in mind if again if anyone is looking for a recording of this we will have this available you'll also be able to garner the other resources available from this as well we have only a few minutes left so i do want to close this up and um [Music] and open up our discussion and what i will do is right at 1 30 i will make an announcement saying that it's 1 30 if anyone needs to drop f at the time great we might stick on for another five to seven minutes for the purposes of conversation thank you for joining us today everyone if you have to go um so what i wanted to do was pivot and turn things over to uh you know bring bring carrie in here for a moment um kerry you know we dp is extremely busy right now with reporting in florida and so they could not make it today to make another presentation sort of where the updates were i'm sure you were probably chomping at the bit when ryan was speaking to the part about not having to roll with the wotus rules um changes in new jersey i know i got excited about that too i did not realize that was part of the case so um carrie just from your perspective with the timing of when the uh when florida assumed 404 and the changes in wotus rules like yeah what do you what do you see most alive right now okay so yeah a lot lots happened in florida um over the last year um there was leading up to the state assumption in december 2020 there had been a lot of discussion for a couple years and it finally rolled out in december 2020 um and it hasn't hasn't necessarily gone smoothly i don't know if anybody was really anticipating that it would um but it's just been so much change quite frankly and um you know we're still everybody's working out the kinks you know and we're we're doing the best we can but um you know it's definitely created you know definitely kind of a learning curve for i think a lot of folks um on the agency side um created some definitely you know i think the overall goal was to you know streamline things and and make things go faster smoother one of the issues we were dealing with prior to that was you know getting a 404 permit from army corps sometimes would take a year or two two years um because they don't have the time clock so that was one of the main main goals i think with the drive between behind doing the state assumption but um and things are going faster than the typical core process would go um but still again working out some of the kinks you know one of the issues i think we've a few issues we've kind of run into with some of the delays is workload quite frankly um we've had a tremendous amount of influx of people moving to florida last couple years i don't know if a lot of that was maybe driven by covid who knows but just the workload alone has been off the charts with um of course increased development and the permitting that goes with it on top of that when the state assumption happened in december 2020 the the dp staff had hundreds and hundreds of applications that were literally dropped on their lap right before christmas it was december 22nd so they didn't have a very good christmas that year um so yeah it took them quite a bit of time to get caught up another big issue was resources and staffing um you know i think you know they weren't quite ready for the volume of work that it was going to take to really deal with not only the stuff that just got dropped off on their lap but then the learning curve to get everybody kind of caught up to speed um unfortunately you know as on the consultant side we did hear that you know across the state they did have quite a bit of mass exodus of of staff that left dp and i think now they're in a much better place where they've gotten staffed up again um and starting to get things kind of rolling again so it's it's going it's going smoother um and of course the the whole lotus criteria that's been that's been an ongoing discussion you know i'm kind of at the point with clients where i tell them you know what i tell you today we'll probably be different tomorrow so you just have to be patient um so we're we're expecting and we're kind of hearing that in august the the state is going to roll out with a different interpret interpretation of the wotus criteria and how they're going to implement it so we're all very anxious to see what that's going to look like and you know all the changes that are going to occur as a result of that um another thing that's kind of i think maybe a little unique with how how dp as approached the state assumption is you know the army corps of course has their wetland delineation um process their own methodology they follow and the state of florida has always had their own separate delineation process so when dp took on the state 44 program they decided they wanted to stick with the state wetland methodology rather than adopting the army corps methodology so in dp working with water management districts who are the agencies throughout the state that also deal with the state regulations um it kind of wadded up the delineation review process and you know jeremy you showed one of your 62 340 slides up there which is a data form that's now required there's all this extra effort that um is going into the delineations and the agencies as far as the documentation they have to do and all these data forms even if you have a site that is 100 uplands the dp and water management districts are having to go out and do data forms just in the uplands alone so that in itself has created major timing delays where we when we submit an application you will not get an agency to step foot on site for at least three months so it's just created a massive backlog um in terms of the process and obviously we're hoping that all gets better and they're they are doing some things between dep and wattage management district try to kind of get get that sort of moving more smoothly and get caught up with some of that backlog but um yeah there's just been a number of things that have sort of you know i think people weren't really anticipating and it's kind of hard to until you're kind of in the process and you know realizing that you've got all these things that you kind of have to marry together and make it all work so great thank you carrie and again it is a little past 1 30 so if anyone needs to go thank you for joining us but if you don't mind sticking around we've got a few more questions here we'd like to field feel free to stick around i want to turn kind of continuing in that vein carry i'm going to turn it over to todd you know hearing a little bit todd from kerry here about what from the consulting perspective uh how the 404 assumption has impacted uh clients customers etc so being a consultant in michigan how do you see the 404 assumption in michigan impacting clients customers etc [Music] in terms of wetlands we don't have to worry about the lotus stuff and honestly most of the consultants i'm going to say the majority of consultants in michigan don't know what you guys are talking about in terms of all this religious variation and the changes because we don't deal with it and so that's a huge benefit and a huge benefit that that i testified in front of the the michigan house and senate in regards to keeping the program uh when there there's always been discussion um and and paints a pretty good picture and i think we support that picture for the most part but it is a controversial program we've got six and a half million acres of wetlands in michigan and so that impacts private property uh people you know you have that uh controversy of private property versus regulations so it's the wetland regulations are constantly reviewed and the lakes and streams regulations are constantly reviewed and discussed at the legislature uh but but the answer over the last 25 years has been the same we need to keep the state program we need to keep control of wetland regulations we need to stay as far away as we can from the federal regulations be consistent with them but but don't give it back to the feds don't get involved with the wotus issues and and i think on the private side we're pretty happy of that we can easily for the most part tell a private landowner if a wetland's regulated or not based on some pretty simple rules that the state of michigan has there are some controversial wetlands that you know we run into once in a while but most wetlands are regulated 90 plus percent probably is a pretty good number of the ones that we regulate uh another interesting thing in in terms of core jurisdiction in michigan is that it is just on the great lakes shorelands and we don't deal with them much in terms in terms of wetland regulations in in southern michigan uh the developed areas on the great lakes shores there's not a lot of wetlands left and and in northern michigan there are wetlands but that doesn't have the development pressure as much in addition uh eagle and the state of michigan significantly protects great lake coastal wetlands so we just don't deal with those on the private side as much so i don't even know who the core representatives are so todd one of the things that you and i spoke about back in december when we decided to cook this up this month was in respect to the uh sort of the bipartisan support for the state assumption can you share a little bit more about that with with our audience well i think it's uh and and i've had a lot of discussions and there's been a lot of potential bills to modify the state's wetland protection statutes but again the result always comes back on both sides of the aisle that we need to support this program the state needs to fund this program again the funding is not based on just fees but general fund dollars go to this program and that is supported in a bipartisan manner because of these pretty straightforward rules and laws now of course there are people who don't like the program at all and there are people that like to pro like the program and want to keep it and some would like to just get rid of it and go to the feds and fight about uh what a regulated wetland is or not in the regular regulatory community that i work for my clients they just want to know what's regulated what they can get a permit for and get keep their projects moving versus having the cloudiness of the federal regulations so that that brings everybody to the table and and as we i think anne said the program continues to be tweaked but uh is supported by everybody it's it's let's tweak it but let's make sure we keep it great so uh susan i'm really interested in how that looks in new jersey you know in political support well i mean we have definitely gone you know we've had republican governors actually we got assumption right when a republican governor was elected so we&#
2022-01-30