Iowa Public Radio
Wetlands play a crucial role in purifying our water. By filtering pollutants, wetlands can improve the quality of our water supply and provide enormous cost savings to local economies. The value of wetlands to the U.S. economy has been estimated to be about $10,000 per acre per year. Wetlands are home to hundreds of species of birds, fish, amphibians, mammals, and humans alike. The health of both the built environment and natural environment is inextricably tied to the protection of the Midwest’s wetlands.
Additionally, wetlands contribute to community resilience against extreme weather events and flooding by acting as natural sponges, absorbing excess precipitation and mitigating flood damage. Scientists expect the cost and frequency of extreme weather events to rise, as climate change impacts increase. Wetlands also absorb heat-trapping climate emissions, storing 50x more carbon than rain forests.
Unfortunately, we have already lost much of the region’s historic wetland acreage, as much of it was drained for farmland or other development. ELPC is working to protect the remaining marshes, bogs, ponds, swamps, floodplains, and other wetlands across the Midwest through a variety of tactics in multiple states.
The “swampbuster” provision of the 1985 Farm Bill has protected wetlands in Iowa and nationwide for nearly four decades. Unfortunately, a new lawsuit (from the same firm that rolled back wetlands protections in the Supreme Court Sackett case) seeks to invalidate Swampbusters. ELPC is representing the Iowa Farmers Union, alongside the Iowa Environmental Council (IEC), Dakota Rural Action (DRA), and Food & Water Watch (FWW), who filed a motion to intervene in October 2024. Our goal is to protect the long-standing Swampbuster provision to defend clean water, rural communities, and Iowa wetlands.
ELPC Staff Attorney Katie Garvey said “The plaintiff who filed this lawsuit – a Chicago attorney who owns land in Iowa – does not speak for farmers. The court needs to hear from farmers who understand that destroying wetlands is not only bad for the environment, it also threatens their livelihoods.”
In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court made a disastrous decision for the environment that severely curtailed the waterways covered under the federal Clean Water Act. In the Sackett vs EPA decision, the Court diminished the federal authority to protect wetlands nationwide. Some Midwestern states (Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin) had state wetlands laws they could fall back on, but Illinois does not have a standalone state wetlands program and has already lost 90% of the state’s wetlands since the 1800s.
ELPC convened with our environmental and conservation partners to call for change, pushing for legislation that can fill the gap and protect our critical remaining wetlands. Read more about the proposed bill here, read our letter to Governor Pritzker here, or tell your legislators that you care about protecting Illinois’ wetlands here. They can pass legislation this fall to ensure these wild and natural places continue to thrive for generations to come.