Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court stripped protections from wetlands in its Sackett v. EPA ruling, putting almost all nontidal wetlands at risk. New research from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found the decision puts more than 640,000 acres of wetlands in Iowa at risk of destruction by industrial agriculture and other industries, at a potential cost of $477 million in annual flood mitigation benefits. The threat in Iowa, where agriculture occupies over 80% of the land, is particularly acute because the state has no wetlands protections.
The UCS analysis found the entire Upper Midwest (Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin) contains 30 million acres of wetlands at risk, potentially costing the region $22 billion in annual flood mitigation benefits.
“The United States already has lost half its wetlands since our country’s founding, and the rapid growth of agriculture is the single biggest culprit,” said Dr. Stacy Woods, research director for the Food and Environment Program at UCS and author of the report. “Now, the Sackett decision has put tens of millions of acres of wetlands in the Upper Midwest at risk of losing protections and being polluted, converted to farmland or otherwise developed. As the climate crisis increases the frequency and severity of flooding, wetlands become increasingly valuable as natural flood protection that can capture and slow flood waters that threaten homes. The loss of remaining wetlands will have very real consequences for people living in Iowa.”
The UCS research builds on peer-reviewed research which estimated one acre of wetlands provides $745 of flood mitigation benefits to residential homes. Those costs would otherwise be borne by homeowners and taxpayers through the National Flood Insurance Program.
Previous flood events in the Midwest have caused billions of dollars in damages, including $1.6 billion in damages in Iowa in 2019. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, Iowa has had six flood disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion in the last two decades. Just this year, the Midwest saw record flooding in June, with some communities in Northwestern Iowa receiving 10-20 inches of rain.
In addition to their role in flood prevention, healthy, intact wetlands play an important role in filtering water pollution to keep rivers, lakes and drinking water sources clean. Persistent overuse and runoff of fertilizer and pesticides from industrial agriculture overwhelms that filtering capacity, polluting and degrading wetlands and waters downstream. Agricultural degradation of wetlands is poised to worsen now that these sensitive ecosystems have largely lost federal protections.
The harmed caused by the Supreme Court decision is likely to be compounded by the incoming Trump administration, with its stated intention to pursue deregulation and dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency as well as U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation initiatives.
When sufficiently funded and effectively employed, USDA conservation programs can protect and restore wetlands. But time-tested USDA wetlands protection and restoration programs may face cuts from the incoming administration and Congress. The UCS report recommends the next food and farm bill strengthen wetland protections by:
- increasing support for programs that help farmers restore damaged wetlands on their properties and convert cropland back into wetlands;
- increasing investments in agriculture practices that reduce runoff; and
- regulating agricultural pollution that damages wetlands.