King bill would reform procedures on wetlands

AUGUSTA — Gov. Angus King plans to introduce legislation this week to create a one-stop shopping system that would ease the permitting process for landowners seeking to develop on wetlands.

Projects now must be reviewed by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. There is no limit to the amount of time the review can take.

Under King’s proposal, all applications for wetlands permits would be processed by the state DEP within 30 days. Applications would not require corps review on projects that affect less than 15,000 square feet of wetlands. About 70 percent of all applications would fall into this category.

“It is high time we streamlined, simplified and speeded up the wetlands permitting process,” said John P. DeVillars, regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The DEP regulates wetlands of more than 10 acres; the corps regulates all wetlands.

“This proposal exempts the smallest projects, speeds up the process for all projects and makes sure that we stay tough where sensitive ecosystems are at stake,” said DeVillars.

New Hampshire and Massachusetts have similar programs.

Three Scarborough homeowners know how complicated the process can be, said Alan Stearns, director of regulatory affairs for the Maine Alliance, a coalition of businesses.

In the late 1980s, a developer created lots in a Scarborough subdivision by filling wetlands without the corps’ permission. People who purchased homes in Baywoods were threatened with fines and removal of the fill.

“The fiasco that took place in Scarborough would have been avoided under this new procedure. It wasn’t that the people involved were trying to do something wrong. Their problems were caused by the fact that they didn’t know they needed a permit from the corps,” Stearns said.

King’s proposal, developed over the past year by a legislative task force, is the result of an agreement between diverse groups such as the DEP, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Maine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Associated General Contractors of Maine.

“This (bill) represents a consensus between some pretty strange bedfellows,” said Beth Nagusky, staff attorney for the Natural Resources Council. “It proves we can have regulatory reform that satisfies the concerns of businesses and landowners without rolling back protections for a valuable natural resource,” she said.