Wetlands protect us – let’s protect them, too 

It’s hurricane season in the South, as Debby’s arrival made clear in early August. As the storm moved through the southeast, it brought high winds and heavy rainfall to parts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, causing the ocean to surge and rivers miles inland to rise. 

More recently, an unnamed storm caused historic flash flooding in southeastern North Carolina – the fifth “once-in-a-lifetime” flood to inundate the region in 25 years.  

Southerners are no strangers to the storms that often visit us at summer’s end, but climate change has made them stronger and likely to hang around longer, leading to increased rainfall and greater flood risk. As we seek to protect our communities from danger, damage, and the cost of flood recovery, one crucial solution is preserving the natural buffers we already have: wetlands.  

Often low-lying and covered in dense vegetation, wetlands act like sponges during flood events, slowing the speed of rising water and storing up to one million gallons per acre. We explored three communities where healthy, protected wetlands mean the difference between facing flood risk and keeping families safe and sound.  

Nashville, TN: Not-so-isolated wetlands  

When you picture a wetland, you might first think of the marshy estuaries of the coastal South. But landlocked Tennessee is also home to a vast number of wetlands – over 787,000 acres – which serve a critical role in keeping the people of the Volunteer State safe.  

Dr. Chris Vanags, a research professor at Vanderbilt University, has spent time in the field with developers testing soil to make sure they don’t accidentally build on wetlands, which can appear dry at certain times of year. One reason that land is worth protecting?  

“From my standpoint,” says Vanags, “it costs a lot more to mitigate the damage of flooding than it does to protect the land that would do that on its own.”  

It’s not always obvious that isolated wetlands, even though they’re called isolated, are actually a complete part of an ecosystem.

Dr. Chris Vanags, Vanderbilt University

Last year, Vanags and three colleagues published a report on the benefits of Tennessee’s isolated wetlands – wetlands that appear disconnected from other water bodies and have recently been the target of the Supreme Court and state legislatures. 

“It’s not always obvious that isolated wetlands, even though they’re called isolated, are actually a complete part of an ecosystem,” Vanags explains. So-called isolated wetlands are connected to groundwater and to nearby rivers – and their economic value in Tennessee is estimated at over $21 billion. In addition to cleaning and recharging drinking water, isolated wetlands also help retain water every time it rains, preventing flooding near the Cumberland River and in other floodplains across Tennessee. 

Wilmington, NC: A developed wetland floods fast 

The Northchase neighborhood of Wilmington has recently been hard-hit by flooding. In 2018, during Hurricane Florence, residents experienced up to three feet of water entering their homes, some of the worst impacts in the city.  

Located in the Pumpkin Creek watershed, the Northchase development was built on former wetlands that were drained without permits in the 1990s. The passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 had established wetlands protections, but SELC Senior Attorney Derb Carter explains that certain developers exploited what they thought was a loophole. 

“At the driest times of year,” he remembers, “developers were excavating ditches to drain wetlands.”  

Once that happened, the Army Corps of Engineers, which grants permits, determined the wetlands were drained and that federal protections no longer applied. 

When Carter found out about the drainage of a Wilmington pocosin – a type of bog unique to the southeastern United States – he successfully brought a case against the Army Corps that protected the remaining intact wetlands on the site and closed the legal loophole.  

But the ruling in that case didn’t call for the restoration of the drained wetlands where Northchase was eventually built. Today, several Northchase properties are Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) buyouts – that is, flood-prone land that the government buys to restore to green space – underscoring the shortsightedness of wetlands development. 

The consequences of wetlands destruction, Carter adds, often fall not on developers but on community members. “The developer is long gone,” he says. “People who bought or built houses in Northchase probably didn’t know that they were doing so on former wetlands.” 

Raleigh, NC: Preserving a community’s natural treasure 

In one neighborhood in southeast Raleigh, you don’t need to go far to experience the joy of nature. As you walk into Walnut Creek Wetland Park, located in the Rochester Heights community, you’re quickly surrounded by pond cypress and sycamore trees, black rat snakes, deer, box turtles, and dragonflies. The beautiful park also serves a lifesaving function, helping protect nearby residents from flooding.  

“When they built Rochester Heights, they knew that they were building in the floodplain,” explains George Jones, Jr., who serves as the executive director of Partners for Environmental Justice, the organization that spearheaded the park’s establishment.  

Constructed in post-World War II, segregated Raleigh, Rochester Heights was built in the low-lying, flood-prone part of the city – fitting a nationwide pattern of housing discrimination that has led to disproportionate flood hazards for Black Americans. 

Jones says that after Hurricanes Floyd and Fran, which inundated the neighborhood, PEJ founder Dr. Norman Camp worked alongside community members and city officials to protect Walnut Creek from development and waste disposal. Replete with rain barrels, cisterns, a constructed wetland, and the largest remaining natural wetlands in the Walnut Creek watershed, today the park mitigates flooding while providing education on flood protection, urban heat islands, and environmental justice.  

When they built Rochester Heights, they knew that they were building in the floodplain.

George Jones, Jr., Partners for Environmental Justice

For Jones, essential to PEJ and the park’s mission is the notion that environmental and community well-being are interlinked. 

“The definition [of environmental justice] I often use is human-kind plus nature-kind,” he says. In the conservation space, Jones explains, “a lot of times, people are all about nature and protecting wildlife habitat, but they don’t have a relationship to the community. You’ve got to connect that relationship.”  

Protecting our protectors 

In a 2023 decision, the Supreme Court stripped protections from at least half of America’s wetlands, and some state legislatures have unfortunately begun to follow suit. North Carolina lawmakers eliminated protections for millions of acres of wetlands across the state, while the Tennessee legislature recently debated a similar bill. 

When government and developers endanger wetlands, they endanger people, the places we love and call home, and our economies. As Southerners prepare to weather storms this hurricane season and beyond, destroying our natural protectors is an idea that just doesn’t hold water.  

“You don’t develop in wetlands if you have any concerns about future flooding,” says SELC’s Carter. “To me, it’s common sense.”