Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, seeks to make a bad bill better, and on Tuesday it was kicked back to a subcommittee for more study.
That study should start with the basics. Legislators must learn that isolated freshwater wetlands are not mud puddles. They are not a menace to progress, but a community asset that needs preservation:
Legislators also should study the folly of the current bill, which would limit state regulation to wetlands larger than five acres. That is absurd. That would mean 75 percent of isolated freshwater wetlands statewide would be unregulated.
The bill also is too lax in mitigation requirements when wetlands are filled. The state must demand more land to mitigate each acre of wetlands affected by development.
South Carolina must act because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the isolated freshwater wetlands do not fall under federal regulation.
South Carolina must restore the level of regulation that was lost -- not water it down to the point of futility.
Federal regulation under the Clean Water Act was in place for 30 years, and it obviously did not put an egregious damper on growth and development.
Herbkersman has balked at the five-acre cutoff, offering instead a two-acre threshold for regulation. That is better, but there is no sound reason that it should not be one acre or less. And while all the political horse trading goes on, the wetlands remain threatened.
Legislators should entrust the state Department of Health and Environmental Control to draft wetlands regulations that would continue the federal protections. That should be a matter of course, not a matter of political lobbying.