Draining the Swamp

Four days after the meeting, Bush killed plans to revise the act. The following April, he stood in a marsh in Kennebunkport, Maine, and reaffirmed his father's old pledge to maintain "no net loss" of wetlands.

The Bush administration's real plans for America's wetlands can seem as slippery as a homeless mud crab. Yet Houston may provide a glimpse into the future. The $1 billion Bayport container ship terminal has been more than a lightning rod for environmentalists; it has provided a glimpse into how Washington is gearing up for a fight.

A high-ranking corps source says the port's permit -- which allows it to destroy more than 100 acres of "isolated" wetlands without any mitigation -- was the subject of a battle in Washington that lasted for months. The Environmental Protection Agency wanted the corps to claim control over the wetlands because they were connected to Galveston Bay via "sheet flow" -- shallow, wide overflows atop levees. Corps officials in D.C. resisted. "It was such a hot issue that it bounced everywhere," the source says. "And in the end, we were told not to count sheet flow."

The national corps kept local regulators on a tight leash. Before the permit was issued, the Pentagon sent Brigadier General Alfred K. Flowers, who had no biology experience, to walk the site and uphold the final wetlands determination.

More important, the official adds, the district viewed the Bayport decision as evidence that national headquarters would shoot down any attempts to more comprehensively protect wetlands in the future.

Local environmentalists are still fighting back. Last year four local cities and eight environmental groups lost a challenge to the decision in federal district court in Galveston. They've taken the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a move that has national environmental groups on edge.

"We have been getting phone calls from people in other parts of the country that are scared to death," says Blackburn, who represents the Bayport opposition in the case.

If the Fifth Circuit sides with the corps, the ruling will conflict with pro-environment decisions from other circuit courts. It might cause the Supreme Court to take up the issue, pitting Blackburn and the Bush administration in a high-stakes face-off that could determine the fate of wetland protections nationwide.

A loss for Blackburn could mean the national corps wins a court-ordered rollback: Galveston's wetland policies could be applied to California, Florida, Vermont and everywhere else in the United States, exposing thousands of acres to development.

But a victory could help alter the course in Texas. "We in Texas should enjoy the same protection that the rest of the United States is getting," Blackburn says, "and it's wrong that we are not."

A few miles from NASA, past the plowed front lines of Clear Lake City's rising outer subdivisions, a neighborhood park welcomes Boy Scout troops and high school cross-country teams into a frequently sweltering den of alligators, thorns and chomping insects.

The Armand Bayou Nature Center might not always be the best spot for a volleyball game or a picnic, but Sipocz and Jacob are regulars here. After a strong November rain, Jacob fires up an all-terrain vehicle and Sipocz stands on the back, casually ducking to avoid trees. The roaring machine curves down a dirt road into one of the region's few protected tracts of forested wetlands.

Founded in 1974, the preserve may soon become one of the last places in the Houston area where large uninterrupted wetlands are visible. The 2,500-acre site provides an all-too-rare laboratory for researchers to learn about such ecosystems -- and to challenge the corps's assumptions.

The scientists come to a jerky stop and bushwhack past magnolias and palmettos up a small stream. It soon disappears, yet shallow water continues to wash over the land. It is flowing from a wetland, an acre-sized open pool a few dozen yards deeper into forest, full of gambusia fish and reedy sugarcane plumegrass.

Sipocz punches data into a global positioning system and dictates coordinates to Jacob. He aims to prove the wetland drains into Armand Bayou. And along the way, he wants to measure how much pollution the marsh removes from rainwater, which collects here after absorbing toxins such as benzene and nitrous oxide from the ground and Houston's troposphere.

The first of its kind on the Texas coast, the study ultimately could give the corps a stronger case to conserve local wetlands for their role as water purifiers. "It just seems natural that they would want this information," Sipocz says.

Yet it's unclear what the corps could do with it. Regulators say science has become almost irrelevant to the agency's approach. "It doesn't make sense," one corps employee says. "It's not science; it's politics."

After decades with the corps, however, Cutler seems to have come to terms with his job's natural political ebbs and flows. "The politicians respond to the interest the public expresses," he says.

"If you are not happy with what's going on, change it."