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2009 marks the 20th Anniversary of the National Wetlands Awards program. Since 1989, the program has honored 143 champions of wetlands conservation; helped draw local and national media attention to their causes; and played an important role in securing funding for and convincing policy makers to consider seriously the issues they have championed. Please consider nominating someone for the 20th Anniversary National Wetlands Awards.

The 2009 nomination form and nomination guidelines are now available.

The 2008 National Wetlands Awards winners accept their awards. View more photos from the ceremony.

 

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1990 National Wetlands Award Recipients

 

Lifetime Achievement Award

Jon Kusler, founder and executive director of the Association of State Wetland Managers (ASWM), is the first recipient of the National Wetlands Awards Lifetime Achievement Award for singular dedication and excellence in wetlands protection. Although Kusler has been committed to the enhancement and protection of water resources for more than 20 years, I suspect that he has just begun his efforts.

Kusler started his life and received his academic training in Wisconsin, the land of waters. In addition to a law degree, he has a master’s degree in water resources management and an interdisciplinary doctorate in water and land-use planning. As a student and later as a member of the University of Wisconsin staff, Kusler was instrumental in formulating Wisconsin’s floodplain, shoreland, and wetland management programs. Since those early days, he has assisted agencies of many states, including Alaska, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota in formulating and improving their wetland and flood-plain programs. Kusler has also served on the staffs of the University of Massachusetts and Harvard University. He spent four years in Washington, DC, as an Institute Fellow at the Environmental Law Institute while living, somewhat uncharacteristically for a Fellow, on a houseboat. In addition, Kusler has served as a consultant to the U.S. Water Resources Council, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among others. Most recently, he was an adviser to the intergovernmental National Wetlands Policy Forum, which recommended, among other things, a no net loss goal.

Kusler is a prolific creator and gatherer of ideas and knowledge. He has shared this knowledge with many of us in the wetlands protection field through his writing and his organizing of people and seminars. The last time I saw a list of Kusler’s publications, it went on for over three single spaced pages. Some of his most well-known publications include Strengthening State Wetland Regulations, Emerging Issues in Wetland and Floodplain Management, Regulating Floodplains, Our National Wetland Heritage: A Protection Guidebook, Wetland Creation and Restoration: The Status of the Science, and all the proceedings of the ASWM’s national symposia, especially, Strengthening the Role of the States.

Kusler’s enthusiasm and concern for water resources have put him in contact with literally thousands of people world-wide. He has maintained this network through informal meetings; through organizing and participating in numerous seminars, workshops, and training sessions; and by helping to found two national organizations: Kusler was instrumental in the formative days of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, and went on to found the ASWM which he now serves as the overworked executive director. Even before founding the ASWM, Kusler was well known for his organization of national and regional workshops and symposia. These sessions have gained a reputation of not only being extremely timely and focused on important wetlands issues, but also for being extremely productive in terms of the quality and quantity of information presented. Kusler is currently in the process of organizing at least two workshops and a national symposium for the ASWM in 1991.

Kusler is also very active internationally. He organized the 1989 International Symposium on Wetlands and River Corridor Management, the 1989 Workshop on Ecotourism and the Yucatan and Maya Region, and the recent symposium on Ecotourism and the Conservation of Wetlands, Parks, and Other Natural Areas. Kusler is continuing this interest by leading the ASWM’s effort in writing a wetland interpretation and ecotourism guidebook. As always, Kusler is in the forefront of promoting national leadership in the careful and wise management of this nation’s wetlands. His current work involves the preparation and presentation of responses, discussion papers, and recommendation papers on the proposed revisions to the 1989 Federal Manual for Identifying and Delineating Jurisdictional Wetlands, on Federal Water Pollution Control Act FWPCA) reauthorization, on FWPCA §404 implementation, and on numerous other federal wetland legislative issues and Initiatives.

Finally, Kusler organizes great field trips. The very first ASWM field trip is especially memorable as, among many other things, the start of Jon’s romance and eventual marriage to Pat Riexinger--one of this year’s award winners in the state government category.

— Scott Hausmann, Water Regulation Section, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Nonprofit Category

Wetlands are a way of life for John W. (Jack) Broome and Althea Pratt-Broome, husband-and-wife winners in the nonprofit category. Wide expanses of wetlands, trees, and wildlife habitat border three sides of their historic home in a burgeoning suburb of Portland. At the back of their three-acre parcel is the sprawling Hedges Creek Marsh. A tall beaver dam stands as a showcase attraction for the popular public tours they conduct each year.

Althea, an educator specializing in alternative programs and the arts, mobilized local citizens in the 1970s after hearing of industrial development plans for the marsh and watching fill appear along the edges. In time she met Jack, a Connecticut native and founding partner of BOOR/A, an Oregon architectural firm. He became one of her hardest-working collaborators.

The controversy over the development plans aroused Tualatin, then a sleepy suburban town. Public meetings, at first involving only a few concerned citizens, soon became the largest gatherings in town. Althea also lobbied regulators, the governor, and other influential officials. By 1980, these officials were all paying attention.

Their victory, an impressive demonstration of grass-roots action, was unfortunately less than total. Some parts of the marsh eventually will be transformed by commercial buildings and high-rise apartments, but other important areas will be saved from development. Through the process, Althea and Jack came to an important realization: the best way to protect a resource in perpetuity is to own it.

Thus was born The Wetlands Conservancy, a nonprofit, all-volunteer land trust dedicated to acquiring and preserving wetlands for wildlife habitat, public enjoyment, research, and education. Now starting its second decade, the Conservancy is campaigning across the state to protect wetlands.

The Conservancy’s profile is prominent for a group with only 250 members and a shoestring budget. This is primarily due to Jack’s decision, seven years ago, to follow his heart and make the Conservancy a total commitment. Taking early retirement, he worked for wetlands protection full-time as the Conservancy’s unpaid chief operating officer, spokesman, and field supervisor. On a typical day, he opens mail while listening to telephone messages so he can stay ahead of the next flood of calls. Between interruptions, he is likely to respond to a wetland fill permit, counsel a citizen concerned about wetland damage, prepare a map for a new wetland project, or prepare documents for a committee meeting. Evenings are for catching up with environmental publications. Weekends are for work parties—for bringing other volunteers together to plant vegetation, put up nest boxes, and gather litter.

Althea, meanwhile, has long made wetlands an important aspect of her Willow Brook Center for the Arts, a summer children’s program that draws more students every year to outdoor art and educational projects. Her schedule includes wetland tours, where she joins Jack in leading visitors on walks. She also presents slide shows, gives talks, and works on wetland projects with Campfire and Scout groups.

In recent years, Althea and Jack have seen a tremendous increase in wetlands interest among citizens, regulators, and developers. Jack plays a key role in such diverse projects as the creation of a residential wetland; the development of a multi-benefit project for enhancing habitat, public viewing, and water-quality management; the establishment of other land trusts in Oregon; and the reestablishment of a former waterfowl haven. Busier than ever in what for most people are retirement years, Althea and Jack are finding that even as they try to slide into the shadows of the stage, the spotlight keeps following.

— Larry Kurtz, Information Director, The (Oregon) Wetlands Conservancy

Private Sector Category

David Clabo, this year’s awardee in the business category, has made wetlands creation and restoration an integral part of a job many would not readily associate with conservation. Clabo is currently Memphis landfill district manager for Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI). In 1988, BFI purchased the North Shelby County landfill site outside Memphis, which Clabo and BFI have turned into a unique and creative restoration effort designed to enhance wetlands habitat and wildlife protection. Clabo and North Shelby site manager James Endress have created a wildlife refuge amidst a 959-acre working landfill that represents the first of nine such restoration projects BFI has planned for properties around the country. Because only 50 acres are actively used for filling at any one time, Clabo designed a flexible development plan for the unused acres.

When it opened in 1988, the North Shelby Landfill was bounded by a creek, agricultural land, and an industrial park. Clabo first set aside 300 acres as a buffer zone around the perimeter to help insulate the refuge from adjacent land-use impacts.

Next, Clabo stopped all farming operations on the landfill site, and began a program of planting a wide diversity of plant species to stabilize the soils and provide as many different wildlife habitats as possible. Because of the tendency of the site to retain water, Clabo devised a way to manage excess water both to make landfilling possible and to benefit wildlife. The soils on the site are primarily silt loams with a relatively high water-holding capacity, and the area receives almost twice as much precipitation each year as it loses through evapo-transpiration. This amounts to 2.5 million tons of surplus water entering the landfill each year that must be managed both to stabilize the soils and protect the wetlands in and along the buffer zone.

As soon as all the row cropland was covered with vegetation, Clabo set about developing water sites for the wildlife program. He designed a plan for the site that would provide a variety of habitats, including a 25-acre lake and a 359-acre tract dedicated permanently to the wildlife enhancement program. Clabo and his staff have developed a program in which each sedimentation pond is scheduled to become a wetland as BFI moves from one active landfill area to the next. They will develop a minimum of 40 acres of wetlands at the North Shelby landfill during its operation, and plan to institute a similar pattern of rotation at the nearby South Shelby landfill as well.

Clabo and his staff are now developing four types of wetlands in addition to their work on the open water impoundments that consist of marsh areas dominated by hydric herbs, such as cattails, smartweed, sedges, and reeds; swamps dominated by bottomland trees, such as cypress, tupelo, and soft maples; savannahs in which bottomland tree species are separated by open spaces containing marsh-type plants; and open water areas surrounded by marsh and swamp species.

The open water habitat will contain a greater depth of water to ensure a year-round fishery during the late summer and early fall drought season. The 25-acre lake will feature four islands that provide habitat and protection from predators for waterfowl and other bird species. As each section of the landfill is closed, Clabo and Endress design a use for that section to enhance wildlife use and biodiversity.

While Clabo has spent many of his own hours at work designing and implementing his master plan for the landfill refuge, he has also made theproject accessible to the entire community. Clabo has invited area biologists, high school classes, Boy Scout troops, and other community residents to help plant trees, build duck nesting boxes, and work on other projects for the site.

— B.J. Hambers, Memphis District Manager’s Staff, Browning-Ferris Industries

State Government Category

Arthur A. Davis, an awardee in the state government category, has been active in natural resources protection for more than 30 years. Davis has served as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (DER) since his appointment in 1987. Previously, he held the Maurice K. Goddard Chair of Forestry and Environmental Resources at the University of Pennsylvania. His numerous years in public service and nonprofit administration include positions with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in Pittsburgh; the Conservation Foundation in Washington, DC; the federal Open Space Land Program at Department of Housing and Urban Development; and the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, which set the nation’s recreation agenda for a generation and led to passage of such federal legislation as the Land and Water Conservation Fund. As DER secretary, Davis has made wetlands protection a high priority. In 1988, he released a wetlands action plan that outlined administrative and regulatory changes to improve the DER’s wetlands protection programs to help prevent destruction or degradation of wetlands where practicable alternatives exist. Where practicable alternatives do not exist, the plan seeks to minimize any adverse impacts. And when impacts are unavoidable, the DER’s goal is to assure the enhancement, restoration, or creation of new wetland acreage. The plan also offers additional consideration to wetlands of exceptional value for protection. Davis has stressed the importance of the role of education in protecting wetlands. Following his release of the wetlands action plan, a training program was developed for the Department’s permitting and management staff on wetlands identification and regulation to increase awareness of wetlands and to ensure consistency. The DER also developed educational materials both for the general public and for the regulated community to help them comply with wetlands regulations. The DER has also worked with the Department of Community Affairs to provide wetlands training for local governments. Davis hopes that with this training, wetlands protection will be raised early in the development process.

Davis has also initiated a practice of reviewing key permitting programs, especially in the Bureaus of Mining, Waste Management, Oil and Gas Management, Soil and Water Conservation, and Water Quality Management, to develop early wetlands identification. A preliminary wetland screening was incorporated into permit meetings.

In December 1989, Davis presented the state Environmental Quality Board with proposed regulations that will assist the DER in assessing and evaluating the effects of activities on wetlands by establishing concise standards for permit review. Permit decisions will provide protection for all wetlands, especially those of exceptional value. The proposed regulations would establish a new category of exceptional value wetlands, including wetlands that provide habitat for important, threatened, or endangered species, or protect water quality. The DER is currently reviewing comments and finalizing the regulations.

Davis has increased the DER’s field presence to detect illegal activities and provide technical assistance and increased the staff available to review Wetlands permits. In January 1989, he established the Divisions of Rivers and Wetlands to carry out the provisions of the wetlands action plan, provide environmental review of all activities requiring permits that may affect wetlands, and develop and implement a long-term public educational and technical assistance program for citizens and the regulated community.

— Barbara Weiss, Regulatory Coordinator, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources

State Government Category

An awardee in the state government category, Patricia Riexinger has worked for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for 14 years and has headed its wetlands program for 7 years.

When Riexinger was 15, her family moved from Buffalo to a rural area outside of Lockport, New York, which had a wetland on the property. It was there that she began exploring a world that would become her profession. She attended Cornell University, earning a bachelor’s degree in wildlife management. During college, Riexinger spent summers working at the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge in western New York near Batavia as part of the Youth Conservation Corps, and later as a biological aide for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Waterfowl Hunting Check Station. After joining the DEC in December 1976, Riexinger spent her first few years working with waterfowl and on endangered species issues.

She began to work with wetlands in late 1983. Since then, Riexinger has overseen New York’s efforts to move from interim wetlands regulations to final regulations, which included comprehensive mapping of the state’s wetland resources. In 1988, she spearheaded the coordination of the state Freshwater Wetlands Advisory Committee to amend state wetlands laws. With input from the Committee, Riexinger rewrote Article 24--the state’s Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act. These revisions have been approved by the governor’s office and were submitted to the state legislature this year as one of the governor’s program bills.

Recently, Riexinger has been conducting publichearings on revisions to Part 664 of the state freshwater wetlands regulations, which sherewrote to be more understandable, to incorporate a no net loss goal, and to address a variety of other land-use planning issues. She helped integrate a no net loss goal into Governor Mario Cuomo’s 1989 State of the State address. She has also mobilized a New York State Wetlands Coalition composed of government, private-sector, and other individuals to foster wetlands protection.

Riexinger is the DEC liaison to numerous federal, state, and local agencies involved in wetlands protection. Throughout her work at the DEC, Riexinger has made herself accessible to, and solicited input from, each of the groups she works with in developing state wetlands initiatives. She also works to integrate wetlands protection into other areas of state government. One example has been the incorporation of a wetlands protection doctrine in the state Division of Water’s Stormwater Technical Guidelines. Riexinger also keeps abreast of current national and international findings on wetlands protection and regulation, and incorporates them into her work at the DEC.

Riexinger’s next immediate goal is to complete a state conservation plan, following the recommendation of the National Wetlands Policy Forum. Under her direction, New York is one of the first states to tackle this project.

Whether appearing on a wetlands teleconference for state employees, writing a case study of the state conservation plan forum in Washington, DC, or drafting the bid specifications for a wetlands handbook, Riexinger puts a great deal of effort into her work. She has extended herself to others, letting them share in her enthusiasm and understanding of the political process to help local or regional entities develop programs that are successful. She is, above all, a team player.

It was not for any one project that Riexinger was nominated, but for the total of her long-term efforts on behalf of wetlands, and for the number of people she has been able to excite, enthuse, and educate about wetlands protection. We are delighted that her efforts have been recognized.

— Linda Cooper, Town of Yorktown (New York), Environmental Resources Group

Local Government

Michael A. Aurelia, an awardee in the local government category, has served as director of the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Agency of Greenwich, Connecticut, since 1974.

A native of Connecticut, Aurelia earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from The Johns Hopkins University in 1969, and a master’s degree in geological sciences from Brown University in 1972. In 1973, he was the director of wetlands and water protection for the Connecticut Conservation Association (CCA) before assuming his present position. Aurelia was also a captain in the Army Corps of Engineers. He lives in Greenwich with his son, Adam.

Aurelia has made a major contribution to wetland protection through the development of a wetland protection program in Greenwich—a program he built from scratch. In his first three years at Greenwich, working out of make-shift offices, including one next to the cell block in the town police building, Aurelia was a one-man operation: alone, he conducted all the field investigations and follow-up, ensured compliance, and wrote court testimonies. Today, with a staff of three full-time professionals, part-time interns, and clerical support, Aurelia directs one of the most protective local wetland regulatory programs in the country, with virtually no net loss of wetlands despite intense development pressure.

Under Aurelia’s leadership, Greenwich has adopted a very conservative freshwater wetland and riparian habitat protection policy. The Agency discourages the filling of any wetlands or watercourse area in the town and seeks to preserve undisturbed buffers of varying widths depending on the nature of the watershed and the proposed activity. If an activity is proposed on a property containing wetlands or watercourses, or if the activity could reasonably affect adjacent regulated areas, the Agency requires a permit or a letter of permission. When the Agency does authorize the filling of a wetlands, some form of mitigation is required. This mitigation usually involves the creation of new wetland areas in a compensation ratio of 2 to 1. Other forms of mitigation can include the enhancement or restoration of disturbed wetland areas or the enhancement of adjacent buffer areas through the planting of native vegetation.

Some of the innovative and effective strategies that Aurelia has developed to protect wetlands include minimum setbacks in drinking water and non-drinking watersheds to create and protect natural buffers adjacent to wetlands and watercourses; special permit conditions to ensure that construction activities do not intrude on regulated areas; close coordination of Agency actions with the Greenwich Department of Public Works’ Building and Engineering Divisions, the Planning and Zoning Commission, and the Conservation Commission; augmentation of the Agency’s permit compliance program through the use of cash permit compliance bonds (the cash compliance program creates an added incentive on the part of the permittee to comply with permit conditions); and a requirement that all permit recipients record the presence of wetlands in the town’s land records to ensure that all subsequent landowners are aware of the regulated areas on their property.

In addition to his work in Greenwich, Aurelia has continued to assist the CCA as well as other nonprofit environmental organizations in the evaluation of environmental impacts on wetland and watercourses. He is the founder of the Applied Ecology Research Institute, a nonprofit environmental organization designed to assist citizen and conservation groups and state and local governments in evaluating development impacts.

— Elliot Schneiderman, New York City, Bureau of Water Supply, Valhalla, New York

Local Government

Gregor I. McGregor, an awardee in the local government category, is a pioneer innenvironmental law and wetlands protection.m From his roots as a Conservation Commission member in Wellesley, Massachusetts, he has helped to shape environmental protection throughout New England.

McGregor gained his love for the outdoors at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1966, and received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1969 before courses in environmental law were available. He began his first position as a Massachusetts assistant attorney general at an annual salary of only $7,500.

But the job had scope. As Earth Day dawned, McGregor found himself representing Massachusetts, helping to shut down burning dumps, stopping discharges of raw sewage to lakes and rivers, and penalizing the fillers of wetlands. Then-Attorney General Robert Quinn appointed McGregor as chief of an as-yet unborn Division of Environmental Protection and gave him his first assignment: make it happen. So McGregor wrote the statute that established the division, and then helped lobby it through the legislature.

As chief of the Attorney General’s Division of Environmental Protection, McGregor headed a legal team that brought a series of highly successful wetlands protection, pollution, and illegal dumping cases. After a 42-day administrative trial, Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station found itself with environmental conditions embedded in its operating license. The major airlines using Boston’s Logan Airport found themselves installing low-smoke jet engines. In fact, runway construction at Logan was closed down to enforce the new state Environmental Policy Act. This landmark case established that environmental impact reports are not appendages to add to finished projects, but must be intrinsic parts of construction planning.

During the 1972 legislative session, McGregor led the effort to create the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act. For the first time in any state, the new Act entrusted wetlands protection to local conservation commissions.

McGregor put the Wetlands Protection Act to the test by joining the Wellesley Conservation Commission soon after it was formed. He became chairman and guided the Commission on a course of full and fair enforcement. In 1979, McGregor helped draft the special act of the state legislature that created the only elected conservation commission in New England—the Wellesley Natural Resources Commission—a board that adds the powers of park commissions and tree wardens to those of conservation commissions. Not surprisingly, he was elected.

Meanwhile, against all advice, McGregor had started his own environmental law practice. Today, he is well known as the founder of McGregor, Shea & Doliner, the largest environmental law firm in New England.

McGregor next became president of the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions (MACC), the first organization of municipal environmental officials in the country. He currently serves as its chairman of governmental affairs. There, he drafted its policy for a no net loss of wetlands. He also wrote the MACC Model Home Rule Wetlands Protection Bylaw, which has been adopted by over 100 Massachusetts cities and towns.

It would take too long to list McGregor’s achievements as a litigator, teacher, and author. Suffice it to say that in Lovequist v. the Conservation Commission of the Town of Dennis, McGregor argued the case in which the right of towns to adopt wetlands by-laws under home rule was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. His course on environmental law at Tufts University is always over-subscribed.

— Judith Nicolson, Director, Natural Resources Commission, Wellesley, Massachusetts

 

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