A bill slashing regulations for an estimated 80% of Tennessee’s non-federally protected wetlands is headed to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk Monday after receiving approval from the General Assembly.
The bill’s West Tennessee Republican sponsors — Rep. Kevin Vaughan and Sen. Brent Taylor — said the legislation removes onerous and seemingly subjective mitigation requirements for landowners and developers.
Environmental advocates and scientists said the legislation paves the way for the destruction of Tennessee’s natural resources.
The bill passed 71-21 with one abstention in the House, and 25-6 in the Senate.
Since the 1970s, wetland regulations in Tennessee have required developers and landowners to seek permission from the state before draining or altering wetlands. The swampy areas can host diverse species, soak up rain water and filter it as it seeps into groundwater tables, recharging aquifers. Alterations to wetlands required developers to pay for mitigation — efforts to preserve or restore other wetlands nearby.
Vaughan and Taylor’s legislation scraps automatic mitigation requirements for most of Tennessee’s isolated wetlands, which lack surface connections to navigable rivers and lakes. Federal law requires mitigation for those larger water bodies, but a 2023 Supreme Court ruling removed isolated wetlands from federal control, leaving their regulation entirely to the states.
Sen. Page Walley, a West Tennessee Republican who helped shape the legislation, said his district includes swampland.
“That land over in that very agriculturally rich area is flat, it does flood, and it is replete with a variety of wonderful wetlands, but things change … and the state was given the authority to begin to monitor that,” Walley said Monday.
The Southern Environmental Law Center estimates the legislation will axe development regulations for up to 80% of Tennessee’s isolated wetlands.
Recent modeling commissioned by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) indicates most of the state’s isolated wetlands are located in West Tennessee, a region expected to see intense development around Ford’s new Blue Oval City manufacturing campus in Haywood County.
More than 30,000 acres of isolated wetlands fall in the northwest corner of the state, which remains inundated with historic levels of water after severe storms caused generational flooding earlier this month.
Nashville Democrat Jeff Yarbro grew up in Dyersburg, one of several West Tennessee towns that flooded.
“(Flooding) is a constant that we are dealing with, and these two things are related … and what (Sen. Taylor) belittles as ‘damp dirt’ is actually the stuff that matters,” Yarbro said. “The research is pretty clear that it’s these smaller wetlands that … actually reduce the peak flooding levels in communities.”
The Senate rejected Sen. Heidi Campbell’s attempt to add a 2-year sunset provision to the law and an amendment that would have brought the law in line with the recommendations presented by TDEC in 2024.
New wetlands regulations
The sponsors initially planned to eliminate all state regulation of isolated wetlands to match federal law, citing other states’ decisions to do the same.
Instead, the legislation defines four types of isolated wetlands and sets regulatory thresholds for each of them.
Artificial wetlands, a new category, are wetlands created purposefully or inadvertently by the alterations of humans or beavers. Developers are allowed to drain and fill this type of wetland with no regulatory oversight.
No permits or mitigation are required for alterations to low-quality isolated wetlands up to 1 acre, or moderate-quality wetlands up to one-quarter acre.
These wetlands have minimal or moderate roles in ecosystems, natural water cycles and chemical cycles, according to the legislation. Exact definitions for wetland quality will be created through a rule-making process that includes public input opportunities.
General permits and 1-1 mitigation are required for low-quality isolated wetlands from 1 to 2 acres in size. Changes to moderate-quality isolated wetlands from one-quarter acre to 2 acres require a general permit with mitigation capped at a 1-1 ratio (which raises to 2-1 on the second acre).
Alterations to high-quality isolated wetlands will continue to require more specialized Aquatic Resource Alteration Permits from the state and mitigation, as will changes to low- and moderate-quality isolated wetlands larger than 2 acres.
About 80% of Tennessee’s isolated wetlands are smaller than one acre, according to SELC Tennessee Director George Nolan. Around 94% of isolated wetlands are smaller than 2 acres.
The legislation also prevents TDEC from considering isolated wetlands of any quality when determining a project’s cumulative impact, even if the project encompasses other federally regulated wetlands.
The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Home Builders of Tennessee supported the legislation, as did the Pacific Legal Foundation, a national firm that fought for deregulation of American wetlands at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023. They said the changes will support property rights and bring down costs for developers.
Several environmental groups, scientists and businesses that restore wetlands and sell mitigation credits to developers opposed the legislation, warning that the clause ignoring cumulative impact could super-charge wetlands destruction and hinder an industry that has invested more than $1 billion in restoration and conservation projects in Tennessee.
Vaughan said he sees mitigation requirements as “trampling people’s private property rights.”
“I may own a piece of property and because someone else says that there is something on my property that has resource value that I’m going to have to pay a third party to be able to use my own property. That does not compute,” Vaughan said Monday.
Rep. Justin Pearson, a Memphis Democrat, voted against the bill.
“If these changes are being made to improve our environment, are being made to improve the quality of life of people in Tennessee, that’s one thing,” Pearson said. “But if we are changing the protections of our natural resources on behalf of corporate entities to be able to make more profit, I have a significant problem with that.”
This article was originally published by Tennessee Lookout.
