20080868 Ver 2_Washington Daily News_20090304

PCS Phosphate mitigation attracts controversy
Subject: PCS Phosphate mitigation attracts controversy
From: susan massengale <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:54:23 -0500
To: DWQ Clips <[e-mail]>
From the Washington Daily News
PCS Phosphate mitigation attracts controversy
Company must create wetlands
By TED STRONG
Staff Writer
If PCS Phosphate receives a federal permit to expand its mining operations near
Aurora, it will dig up wetlands to access the phosphate ore beneath.
The federal permit hinges on, among other things, PCS Phosphate's proposal to
replace the wetlands it disturbs.
The work, called compensatory mitigation, is separate from PCS Phosphate's efforts
to reclaim land it has already mined.
There's no clear consensus among environmentalists and government officials on how
much good would come from the massive mitigation program the company has proposed.
Why mitigation?
Governments use mitigation to ensure wetlands don't disappear from the landscape.
The policy represents a sharp shift from earlier government projects, which for much
of the 20th century emphasized draining wetlands.
The shift marked a change in thinking about wetlands. Instead of seeing them as
stinking, soggy and useless, government officials came to recognize the functions
that wetlands provide.
According to Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Heather Jacobs Deck, wetlands help reduce
flooding, purify water and provide key wildlife habitat.
Jacobs Deck said wetlands near Aurora that PCS Phosphate wants to mine provide a
range of services. The wetlands' most easily shown economic impact, she said, is
serving as a nursery for many fish species that are valuable commercially and
recreationally.
Riverkeepers are independent scientists hired to protect river ecosystems. Jacobs
Deck works through the Pamlico-Tar River Foundation (PTRF), which has criticized
some government decisions during the PCS Phosphate permitting process.
But David Lekson, who's in charge of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Washington
regulatory office, praised the company's mitigation efforts. Lekson is one of
several Corps of Engineers officials with input on PCS Phosphate's federal permit.
"They have exhibited a commitment that we don't often see from permittees," he said.
"They have staff dedicated to ensure that this works. They've got highly qualified
firms that work for them and with them, and they are dedicated to doing the right
thing. And the mitigation work that they have done has been successful."
PCS Phosphate's last mitigation project - at the Parker Farm tract - has now largely
been turned into Goose Creek Game Land near Aurora, which is administered by the
N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.
Not a first choice
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PCS Phosphate mitigation attracts controversy
mitigation projects, though, are a last resort.
Before companies can propose measures, they must prove they cannot reasonably avoid
harming wetlands.
"Mitigation is really your last and final option," Jacobs Deck said.
Lekson said the Corps of Engineers has worked to shape the company's permit
application to ensure it disturbs as few acres of wetlands as possible.
About a dozen potential boundaries for the mine's expansion onto three parcels near
its current site were discussed before company and government officials settled on
the current, and presumably final, version.
The boundaries represented different balances between conservation and phosphate
extraction.
Jacobs Deck said that the PTRF and many government agencies want to see the mining
company dig up fewer wetlands as it expands.
PCS Phosphate officials have repeatedly contended they're doing their best. The
company put up a stiff fight at the end of 2008, when the state Division of Water
Quality wanted to protect a hardwood flat (a type of wetland) as part of a smaller
state permit prerequisite to the federal permit. Ultimately, the state agreed to
allow PCS to mine through a strip of the wetland and preserve the rest.
Effectiveness
But even with all the boundary tweaking, a project as big as the one proposed in
Aurora will disturb many acres of wetlands. Environmentalists have called it the
largest permitted destruction of wetlands ever in North Carolina.
That's where compensatory mitigation comes in: To receive mitigation credit, the
company is required to create more wetlands than it destroys.
The exact ratio of new wetlands depends on whether the company creates totally new
wetlands, restores former wetlands, improves existing wetlands or preserves
existing wetlands. PCS Phosphate is mostly restoring former wetlands, which is the
most prevalent method, experts said.
Lekson, who has worked with PCS Phosphate officials since 2006 to develop the
mitigation plan, said the plan is based on solid science and provides a range of
environmental benefits. For example, he said, the plan addresses many types of
wetlands found in estuaries.
"it encompasses a full spectrum of wetland types that are exemplary of
coastal-plain watersheds, from the very top, which would be the wetland flats, all
the way down through and including wind-influenced coastal wetland communities," he
said.
But critics say people can't recreate in a few years what took thousands of years to
form naturally.
The bottom line, said Jacobs Deck, is that man-made wetlands often don't have the
same value as the natural features they're meant to replace, even if there are more
of them. That's the case with some wetlands PCS Phosphate wants to dig up, she
added.
"To put it in very simple terms, it would be like destroying a van Gogh and
replacing it with two finger paintings and calling it even," Jacobs Deck said.
The soil in natural wetlands, particularly, is tough to replicate, she explained.
Natural soils have unique communities of microbes, including bacteria and fungi and
high levels of organic matter, and some studies indicate it can take reclaimed land
up to 100 years to regenerate that level of complexity, she added.
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PCS Phosphate mitigation attracts controversy
Jacobs Deck said reclaimed farm fields will eventually provide some environmental
benefits, but are "probably always going to be different from what you're trying to
replace."
Lekson takes a different view. He said that much of the land PCS wants to mine has
already been "impacted" - that's environmental-science language for damaged or
degraded by people. Impacted can mean anything from polluted to ditched to
destroyed. In fact, he said, the environment could be improved by the project.
"I'm not saying all of it is impacted, but the majority of what's being impacted
has already experienced previous impacts, so what we should get in return should be
better than what was lost," he said.
Jeff Furness, PCS scientist in charge of mitigation, said the soil in the former
wetlands the company is restoring for mitigation credit still has some original
characteristics, which makes it easier to hit government targets for soil type.
"The soil is still there," he said. "It's a wetland soil. It's just been farmed or
had pine trees planted in it."
And officials emphasized that while the company is building new wetlands now, it
will take PCS Phosphate 35 years to dig up all the wetlands they intend to mine,
meaning that the environmental cost will be spread out and gradual.
Acquisition
PCS has purchased land in parts of eastern Beaufort County and Hyde County to use to
create new wetlands. Government guidelines require that new wetlands be created in
the same part of the same watershed as wetlands being destroyed.
"We started an intense search for mitigation properties in 2004," said Furness.
"It's been a couple of years, really, searching for appropriate sites within our
defined hydrologic unit."
While PCS Phosphate's mitigation for its last expansion is all in one place at the
Parker Farm Tract, it wasn't able to fit all of the mitigation for the currently
proposed expansion into one tract. Instead, it's working on a number of properties,
though some of them connect. The company tries to follow creeks where possible, for
example.
One of the properties the company bought in Hyde County used to belong to Bob Rich,
of the Rich Company, a local real estate firm. The property was once part of a farm
Rich owned. Before that it held a couple of streams. Now, combining the property
with land purchased from several other landowners, PCS Phosphate is hoping to
restore those streams, Rich said.
Monitoring
Once the streams are restored, the water table is raised and the trees are in the
ground, the projects must be monitored. The Corps of Engineers scrutinizes the
projects regularly for five years, longer if the company has to restart because a
first try failed.
Lekson said the Corps of Engineers monitors created wetlands to ensure they're
developing like they're supposed to.
"We are out there every year, sometimes several times a year, keeping track of how
well the projects are doing," he said.
PCS Phosphate pays a consulting firm to monitor the sites, too, Furness said. He
added that the company must meet standards for the water table, soil types and
plants growing on the tracts and that those features provide an easy way to check if
the wetland is providing the services it should be.
"We use what we measure as proxies for function," he said.
The company is also creating more acres of mitigation than it is required to, PCS
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PCS Phosphate mitigation attracts controversy
Phosphate officials said. That way, if some of it doesn't take, the company won't
have to start over.
And the land must be protected in perpetuity by putting an easement on the property.
Rich, the landowner, seemed happy at the prospect.
"You couldn't ask for a better neighbor," he said. "Especially from our standpoint,
because we're hunters and fishermen and conservationists at heart."
Cutline for corrresponding photo: Jeff Furness, the PCS Phosphate scientist in
charge of mitigation for the Aurora facility, shows a wetland plant species that
already has colonized a newly converted wetland. (WDN Photo/Ted Strong)
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Susan Massengale <susan.massengale(a?,ncmai1.net>
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