When designing a new, more resilient landscape for Dia Beacon, a contemporary art museum in the Hudson River Valley of New York, landscape architect Sara Zewde, ASLA, first looked to the past.
She looked to how indigenous people used the river landscape and how water once flowed through meadows. For Zewde, designing a landscape that honors the past is the way to achieve resilience in the future.
Zewde is founder of the landscape architecture and urban design firm Studio Zewde and assistant professor of landscape architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design. She shared her design for a new 8-acre landscape at Dia Beacon during a lecture at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
Dia Beacon lies on the Hudson River, “a water body that runs both ways.” For centuries, it formed a border between different Indigenous peoples. And today, it separates New York from New Jersey.
Hudson River Valley, New York / Harry Gillen, courtesy of Studio Zewde
The site of the museum has had a long history — Native American land, railroad brickyard, Nabisco box printing plant, and now contemporary and land art museum.
“The Dia Art Foundation was born out of the environmental movement of the 1960s,” Zewde said. Dia is a “counter institution” — it was created to counter or undo environmental degradation.
Every aspect of visitors’ experience of the museum, which opened in 2003, has been carefully choreographed. When redesigning the former box plant as a museum, artist Robert Irwin and architectural firm OpenOffice sought to “de-register the hierarchy and grid system” of the building. Their goal was for the interior of the building to have “no central axis.”
Dia Beacon, New York / Bill Jacobson Studio, New York, courtesy of Dia Art Foundation
At the north end of the building, Irwin and team designed the parking lot and public spaces to guide visitors to the museum. But at the south end of the building, the “sense of movement simply stops,” Zewde said.
To regain that movement, Zewde looked to the flow of historic peoples and water for inspiration.
“Indigenous peoples moved across the Hudson River on a seasonal basis to share ideas and technology.”
View of Fishkill looking to West Point, New York / Painted by W.G. Wall; Engraved by I. Hill, Courtesy of Library of Congress
Like these people, water also once flowed through the site’s meadows and wetlands. A quote from author Toni Morrison helped crystalize her ideas:
“‘Floods’ is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding: it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
Zewde sought to “reveal the presence of water” on site and let its remembrance, its natural flow, guide the design.
She envisioned a resilient landscape that would choreograph the flow of water around land forms and through meadows.
Dia Beacon, New York / Studio Zewde
For visitors, an evolving landscape can create a greater sense of connection to natural systems. “They will be able to witness different water levels.”
Dia Beacon, New York / Studio Zewde
Sculptural land forms closer to the museum will guide water away and protect it from river rise and flooding.
Dia Beacon, New York / Studio ZewdeDia Beacon, New York / Studio Zewde
But further away from the building in the lower basin, wet meadows will be created to let water in.
Dia Beacon, New York / Studio Zewde
With meadow designer Larry Weiner, she designed meadows with 90 plant species. “These plants form a palette to paint with.”
Dia Beacon, New York / Studio Zewde
Her design also calls for planting over 400 trees and shrubs, stabilizing soils, and repurposing natural materials found on the site.
Water and how it interacts with people and places has been an enduring interest for Zewde. As a young student, “a storm event led me to landscape architecture.” She saw “political, cultural, economic, and social factors manifested in Hurricane Katrina.”
Now, Zewde designs landscapes that act as nature-based solutions for flooding and river and sea level rise. Her design at Dia more closely connects people to their environment, making them more aware of change, perhaps reducing risks in the process.
“Constitution Gardens will become a biodiversity hotspot on the National Mall,” said Adam Greenspan, FASLA, design partner at PWP Landscape Architecture. “We will create a garden, based in nature, while respecting the historic design.”
Constitution Gardens in Washington, D.C. opened in 1976 to commemorate the bicentennial of the American revolution. Concepts outlined in the McMillan Plan and designs by Dan Kiley and SOM shaped the landscape.
But over the past forty years, the gardens fell into disrepair and became a pass-through site on the way to other more popular destinations on the mall.
Now, the second phase of a three-phase plan to revitalize the garden has been approved by the Commission of Fine Arts and National Capital Planning Commission. The design by PWP Landscape Architecture and Rogers Partners Architects will create a “new ecological landscape” designed for people and hundreds of plant and animal species.
Phase two, which is expected to begin later this year, will redesign the 6.75-acre lake at the heart of the landscape, and create 2.5 acres of new meadows and woodlands that will together function as a natural system.
“The current concrete-lined lake is ecologically dysfunctional,” Greenspan said. “We are rebuilding the lake as a healthy living system.”
PWP will deepen and widen the lake and replace the concrete bottom with clay. A diverse range of aquatic plants will help clean the water and ensure the lake becomes a habitat for fish, frogs, and birds.
PWP envisions such a healthy lake that fly-casting will be possible from a new lake ring, a circular pathway. The interior of the ring will also be a spot for model boating.
The landscape surrounding the lake will be designed to act as part of the water cleaning system.
New soils will be brought in to replace the highly compacted existing soils. Nearly half of the lawns, which don’t add any ecological value, will be replaced with native meadows and woodlands. In these new woods, 478 trees will be planted.
The trees and meadows will feature 124 species. “We are planting a highly diverse palette that will shift and change over time.”
With new soils, meadows, and trees, all the stormwater that hits the site will be captured and filtered, and then circulate into the lake. “The bioinfiltration system, above and below the surface, will leverage plants, soils, bacteria, and animals to clean the water before it enters the lake,” Greenspan said.
The system is expected filter more than nine million gallons of water a day.
An upcoming phase three of the project will include a new pavilion with event spaces; expanded woodlands; and new connections to surrounding streets.
Greenspan argues that the new soil is critical to the success of the project. In 2011, they found half of the original trees on site had failed to thrive and been removed. And since another survey in 2014, another 30-40 percent have gone. “The site is currently inhospitable to plant life.”
“We need healthy soils to create a healthy tree canopy, which can then provide shade to cool the landscape.” The new trees will also shade the lake, chilling the water and adding to the site’s overall cooling effect in D.C.’s increasingly hot summers.
While there is an embodied carbon cost to trucking in acres of new soils, “this is not a place where we could use the very degraded, compacted soil, which is mostly rubble.”
There are trade-offs. The carbon emissions released from soil construction enables the increase in biodiversity and long-term carbon storage and climate resilience of the site.
You have said the dangers of the biodiversity crisis are equal to or even greater than the climate crisis. Can you elaborate?
If we stop emitting carbon dioxide, climate change could be stopped or reversed. But if we lose species, they’re gone forever.
We’ve seen species extinction and the degradation of ecosystems proceed at a rapid pace. We’re losing species at a rate of about anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times faster than the background rate, based on previous extinctions. Addressing climate change will remove one threat to biodiversity, but it won’t stop its decline. If we fix climate change tomorrow, we still are dealing with a massive degradation of nature and biodiversity.
Nature is infinitely more complex than a molecule of carbon. We’re coming up with ways to deal with carbon. But nature is more complex, so we’re still learning a great deal.
When we lose ecosystems or genetic diversity, that impacts our ability to survive as a human species, not to mention all the other more-than-human species that inhabit the planet with us. The food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the medicines we use are all directly related to nature. If we lose nature, we’re going to severely impact all the things that keep us alive and thriving.
While we look to the sky trying to figure out what to do with climate change, nature is being pulled out right from under us.
Conserving and managing at least 30 percent of the world’s lands, inland waters, and coastal areas is something we’re directly involved in and we take to heart every day.
The targets include four overarching goals, including: the “integrity and connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems are maintained, enhanced, or restored, sustainably increasing the area of natural ecosystems by 2050.” This is where landscape architects can have the greatest impact. We’re all involved and can help make sure this goal is met.
The 23 targets can be put into four categories. One is on-the-ground action targets. The other is policy initiatives. The third is financing and capacity building. The fourth deals with inclusion and equity.
At Biohabitats, we’re really focused on the on-the-ground actions. That’s conserving habitat and species. It’s restoring ecosystems, managing invasive species, and adapting and mitigating to climate change. We deal with these on all our projects. But you can’t think of any of these global targets independently. They’re all connected to one another.
Our work also falls into the inclusion and equity batch of targets. We think about Indigenous peoples, communities of color, and underserved communities and make sure these communities not only participate in the work we do, but have the ability to make decisions, deciding what’s going to happen in their neighborhood, communities, and on their land with their consent.
How can landscape architects better design projects to achieve the 2030 biodiversity targets? What are the top three actions landscape architects can take to increase biodiversity in their work?
First, protect and conserve the biodiversity within your sphere of influence.
Second, restore biodiversity, which can take many forms. Look at how the site is connected to the rest of the landscape from a landscape ecology perspective. Seek to understand how nutrients cycle and flow through the site, how water interacts with the site, how species move across the site or inhabit the site, and how that’s all connected to the regional landscape. It’s really hard to increase biodiversity on a site if we don’t understand these connections and relationships.
Third, once you have an idea of what you’re going to protect and conserve, develop ideas and ways to restore and enhance biodiversity. This can take the form of many different strategies and measures.
Landscape architects have a tremendous influence and impact on the way biodiversity is protected, conserved, restored, and enhanced.
Biodiverse landscapes provide a range of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration. But with growing climate impacts like wildfires, landscapes can also become major sources of emissions. Biohabitats analyzed the carbon storage capacity of a fire-prone landscape for the City of Boulder, Colorado. What did you learn?
We were commissioned by the City of Boulder to look at whether their annual carbon sequestration in their open spaces and mountain parks would help them offset the carbon they emit as a city. We inventoried the carbon stock, and annual flux of their landscape, and projected what the loss may be based on fire or another land disturbances, and what the landscape’s potential is in terms of sequestering carbon under a changing climate and with the application of nature-based solutions.
We looked at over 36,000 acres. We found these lands had a really large existing carbon stock. 2.8 million cubic tons of carbon were already being stored in those landscapes.
Map illustrates areas with the greatest carbon density based on soils and landcover. Biohabitats. City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. Sustainability Solutions Group / Biohabitats
The grasslands had the greatest existing carbon storage, mostly in their soils. Wetlands actually had a greater carbon density per acre, but they cover relatively small areas. While the forest and grasslands can store significant amount of carbon in the landscape, our modeling of fire scenarios found that they were also a potential source of carbon emissions due to the risk of loss under certain scenarios.
We found that nature-based solutions could help draw down carbon and reduce loss. For example, prescribed burning can be used to improve landscape resilience. Because when fire-evolved ecosystems aren’t burned, the fires burn with more intensity and typically burn the soil as well. With frequent fires, you get less intensity, and they produce less carbon emissions.
This fell in line with other studies around the world. It also emphasized why developing or tilling greenfields is destructive in terms of carbon emissions. Protecting and conserving wild lands and parks is really important in reducing carbon emissions.
To the untrained eye, some of your firm’s projects look natural, like nothing has been done. Your beautiful project at Teaneck Creek Park in Bergen County, New Jersey, restored 46 acres of freshwater wetlands. Big Marsh Park on the South Side of Chicago restored a dumping ground and treats wastewater, but looks pristine. Is that one of your measures of design success — for your work to read as nature?
A quick story: We worked on a stream and riparian restoration project in Columbia, Maryland, which sits between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. in the 1990s. A reporter contacted us and said “I want to go out and take some pictures of the site you restored.” We told them where it was, and they went out. We got a call the next day saying they couldn’t find it. They were standing exactly at the point where we did the restoration.
With a lot of our restoration work, we hope it blends back into the existing landscape. But it goes a little bit deeper than that. We think about how to restore ecological processes, like food webs, hydrologic or nutrient cycles, ecological succession or disturbance regimes like fire. That’s what we focus on, not necessarily what the landscape’s going to look like.
It’s really place dependent. Every place has these processes, but they operate at different levels, scales, complexities, and relationships. A long grass prairie, an eastern deciduous forest, or a Gulf Coast tidal wetland are different. We’re trying to first understand those processes and design to protect, restore, enhance them.
If we start doing that, then that manifests itself into what the landscape is going to look like; what the plant community is going to look like; how water flows through, over, under the site; how species interact with the landscape; and how the site evolves. We’re trying to mimic ecosystem processes within landscapes that are relatively stable and intact. Much like architects or landscape architects use precedent images, we use reference landscapes.
Sand seepage wetlands at Teaneck Creek Park provide stormwater attenuation and water quality filtration while enhancing local biodiversity. Biohabitats. Bergen County Dept. Of Parks. Teaneck Creek Conservancy. Rutgers’ Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability / David Ike PhotographyTeaneck Creek Park. Biohabitats. Bergen County Dept. Of Parks. Teaneck Creek Conservancy. Rutgers’ Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability / David Ike Photography
For us, there’s an inherent beauty in natural systems. We’re trying to create the building blocks that allow natural systems to regenerate. For a landscape to be sustainable, robust ecological processes need to be in place. Otherwise, the system is going to fall apart.
The Ford Calumet Environmental Center in Big Marsh Park, designed by Valerio Dewalt Train, is home to Chicago’s first decentralized wastewater treatment and disposal system. The system, designed by Biohabitats, includes constructed wetlands, which demonstrate environmental stewardship while serving and improving access to nature. Biohabitats. Chicago Park District Valero Dewalt Train Associates. DbHMS Engineering. Jacobs/Ryan Associates / Tom Harris
We also work in highly disturbed landscapes that are disconnected from natural processes — for example, brownfields or high-density urban areas. While our goal is to restore the full suite of ecosystem processes and functions, many times we are quite limited in what we can do.
Scientists are calling these novel ecosystems. It’s the idea that we can use these reference landscapes as an analog but knowing that we’ll never be able to replicate many of the ecological processes that sustain these landscapes. What can we restore that has a semblance of ecological integrity and provides value to the life of that landscape? That’s where we begin.
It goes back to our tagline: “We’re in the business of restoring the future, not the past.” We can’t go back to the past because there have been so many changes to our landscapes, ecosystems, and planetary systems. We need to look forward.
Your firm works with the Army Corps of Engineers, which has a large contingent of landscape architects. What do you think that the Corps needs to do to fully realize its vision of Engineering with Nature?
We’ve been working with the Corps of Engineers for almost 30 years. I will give a shout-out to Dr. Todd Bridges, who, with his cohort of researchers and other practitioners, developed the Engineering with Nature initiative while he was at the U.S Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). Todd is now with a team of researchers at the University of Georgia, working in collaboration with the Corps and others to advance the idea of nature-based solutions for infrastructure projects all over the world.
In 2022, the ERDC contributed to The White House roadmap for accelerating nature-based solutions. This roadmap lays out five recommendations that the Corps and all federal agencies need to do. For the Corps, this will require Congress to change Corps policies, reallocate funding, and shift priorities. It’s not that the Corps is necessarily trying to make things more difficult or put-up roadblocks. Literally, they can’t do many of the changes we want to see or do until Congress gives them authorization. It’s up to all of us to advocate to our representatives in Congress to make these changes happen.
For example, the Corps has specific guidelines on how they evaluate project alternatives, which give overwhelming preference to damage reduction and business loss reductions. These are worthy benefits, but for the most part they completely ignore ecological and social benefits. It’s hard for the Corps to justify the use of nature-based solutions if the benefit is not quantifiable.
But just this past February, the Corps released a final rule to change that policy. If this rule is adopted, the Corps will be able to develop project alternatives that maximize environmental and public benefits. This allows both quantitative and qualitative data to be used in determining the highest benefit to lowest cost ratio. This alone will accelerate the application of nature-based solutions and aesthetic and context sensitive design considerations in infrastructure projects throughout the country. This could be a game-changer.
Your firm also integrates nature into dense urban environments, like a green street in downtown D.C. How do these small projects provide opportunities to increase biodiversity?
We’ve been working with the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District in D.C. for several years. We’re designing and retrofitting bioretention facilities into the streetscape. Obviously, as landscape architects, we are excited to see bioretention as a stormwater quantity and quality management system being designed and installed all over the world.
The idea of bioretention was developed by Larry Coffman in Prince George’s County, Maryland, a suburb just outside of Washington, D.C. in the early 1990s. Biohabitats was fortunate enough to have worked with Larry on that research, the design specifications, and proof of concept for the very first bioretention facilities in the world. So, this is sort of the homecoming for us.
Stair-stepping bioretention cells provide opportunities to showcase native diversity in the Golden Triangle neighborhood of Washington, DC. Biohabitats. Golden Triangle Business Improvement District. DC Department of Energy & Environment. Triangle Contracting. TCG Property Care. Timmons Group Insight LLC / Biohabitats
There are many benefits. Bioretention systems improve water quality by removing pollutants through soil microbes and uptake by plants. They infiltrate stormwater into the ground and help replenish groundwater. They reduce runoff off from impervious surfaces, particularly when designed with trees. They help reduce the heat island effect. And they also provide micro-habitats for pollinator species and migratory song birds, among other species. Bioretention facilities are wonderful ways to benefit nature and biodiversity in urban areas.
Lastly, in 2023, Biohabitats transitioned ownership from being a privately-held company to a perpetual purpose trust, much like Patagonia did. How did you decide this was the best way to achieve your long-term goals for your team and the planet?
Yes, on Earth Day, 2023, Biohabitats sold all its shares to the Biohabitats Purpose Trust (BPT), which is a non-charitable trust with the explicit purpose of “restoring nature, protecting and conserving biodiversity and inspiring love for wild places.”
I began looking a different options for ownership transition about seven years ago. I looked at selling Biohabitats to our team members, another firm, or private equity. I also considered an employee stock ownership plan, a co-op, and a variety of hybrid business models. Eventually, I came across the concept of a perpetual purpose trust through a business group I belonged to. The idea of locking in our purpose and mission in perpetuity really appealed to me and our team.
With the BPT, Biohabitats’ purpose, mission, and values are locked in for the next 100 plus years and cannot be bought or sold. Under the BPT, Biohabitats operates as a for-profit company trading as C-corporation, with a Benefit Corporation overlay. We are also B-Corps certified, a JUST company, and 1% for the Planet Member. The profits Biohabitats earns are no longer extracted by shareholders, because the BPT is the only shareholder and doesn’t need profits. Instead, profits get reinvested back into our team members, stakeholders, and nature.
The BPT is governed by a board of trustees within the Trust Earth Stewardship Committee, which is responsible for making sure that Biohabitats is meeting its purpose and objectives. There are five seats on this stewardship committee, and we have designated and legally codified one seat for nature. Nature, represented by a nature guardian, has a seat at the table and more importantly, agency in making sure that Biohabitats is meeting its purpose and objectives. We believe it’s the first time in the U.S. that nature has been legally assigned as trustee. For the wild!
“The Mindfulness City will be a sustainable city. To be mindful is to be aware — to perform best,” said Giulia Frittoli, partner and head of landscape at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).
The Kingdom of Bhutan is a landlocked Buddhist country in the eastern Himalayas, nestled between China and India. It covers 14,000 square miles and has a population of nearly 800,000.
The Royal Office of Bhutan asked BIG, Arup, and Cistri to develop a plan for a new Mindfulness City in Gelephu in southern Bhutan, near the border with India.
The city will span 386 square miles and include a new international airport, railway connections, hydroelectric dam, university, spiritual center, and public spaces.
“This site was selected because it is one of the flatest areas of Bhutan.” The site was also chosen to minimize impact on the forest, which covers 70 percent of the country, making the country a biodiversity hotspot.
“Bhutan has this extra respect for nature. Forests are protected in its constitution,” Frittoli said.
And the site’s flat character enables Bhutan to build a new airport. “As an international gateway, it is an ideal location.”
The planning and design team’s novel plan aims to not only preserve the forest but also make room for rivers and elephants.
“We started with a landscape point of view before an urban point of view. We started from the environment,” Frittoli said.
The Mindfulness City, Bhutan / BIG
The site of the future city is laced with 35 rivers. When glaciers in the Himalayas melt, the rivers widen and deepen. Bhutan also has a monsoon season. And with climate change, more water is expected.
BIG proposed designing the city around these variable river flows. “We examined how the rivers expand and contract. The landscape is not fixed; it is a living organism. We will make space for the water.”
Bhutan also has nearly 700 elephants. They move from the highlands down to the rivers and then south to India. So Frittoli and her team proposed natural corridors around the rivers, which can be up to half a mile wide.
“The corridors are nature getaways. This creates space the water and elephants need.”
Spreading from the corridors will be a series of bioswales that will help channel stormwater.
And the plan will create space for water to support urban rice paddies and agricultural fields. “This will create local jobs and increase economic growth,” Frittoli said.
The Mindfulness City, Bhutan / BIG
Parts of Gelephu are somewhat economically depressed. There are abandoned rice paddies and farms, Frittoli said. This is due to labor shortages.
“His Majesty is concerned that young people are leaving the country for Southeast Asia and Australia. They don’t see a future path in Bhutan due to the lack of educational and job opportunities. His Majesty wants to bring them back.”
“The Mindfulness City will provide white-collar jobs in research and innovation. It will open up Bhutan and bring opportunities, so young people stay,” Frittoli said.
In addition, Bhutan is a carbon-positive country, absorbing more carbon than it emits. Its commitment to sustainability guided the planning of the new city, which will maintain a carbon-positive standard and use locally sourced, natural materials. Buildings will be approximately six stories high and made of stone, mass timber, and bamboo.
The Mindfulness City, Bhutan / BIG
The upper part of the new city will be mostly rice paddies and agricultural fields. Much of the urban density will be found in the southern portion of the new city, closer to India.
A series of bridges spanning the rivers will serve as major hubs and east-west connectors. There will be nine types of bridges, reflecting the tenets of Bhutan’s GNP Index.
The Mindfulness City, Bhutan / Brickvisual
The bridges will provide transportation connections, produce energy, and serve as key gathering spaces. One will be a Vajrayana spiritual center, which will give visitors a chance to experience the daily practice of monks. Other bridges will house a healthcare center, a university, a cultural center, and a market.
The Mindfulness City, Bhutan / BrickvisualThe Mindfulness City, Bhutan / BrickvisualThe Mindfulness City, Bhutan / Brickvisual
The plan proposes a new dam for generating hydropower. Bhutan is powered by 100 percent hydropower, and 90 percent of that is sold to India. The dam will power the new city and provide additional income.
The Mindfulness City, Bhutan / Brickvisual
The first phase of the project is expected to be completed over the next two to five years. Frittoli thinks the plan will be fully realized in 20-30 years and grow organically through multiple phases. It will require public private partnerships and increased investment.
She also commented how landscape architects at BIG — a multidisciplinary firm with more than 700 designers worldwide — are leading the massive project.
“In 2021, I was made partner at BIG, which allowed landscape to be seen equally. We went from five landscape architects to 55 globally.”
“Landscape architects are now at the table when projects start. Given the challenges facing the planet, we need more landscape architects leading.”
ASLA 2020 Professional General Design Honor Award. The Native Plant Garden at The New York Botanical Garden. New York, USA. OEHME, VAN SWEDEN | OvS / Ivo Vermeulen
New Research from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Fund Shows Benefits of Nature-Based Solutions
The ASLA Fund has released new peer-reviewed research on landscape architecture solutions to the biodiversity crisis.
The research was developed by Dr. Sohyun Park, ASLA, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Connecticut. Dr. Park and her team won a competitive national grant from the ASLA Fund in 2023 to conduct the research.
“The biodiversity crisis is on par with the climate crisis. An estimated one million out of eight million species on the planet are threatened with extinction. Our research demonstrates that landscape architects play a significant role in designing and preserving green spaces that enhance and restore biodiversity and promote human well-being,” Dr. Park said.
“ASLA supports the global 30 x 2030 goals, which calls for preserving and restoring 30 percent of the world’s ecosystems by 2030. Sohyun’s research shows that landscape architects’ planning and design work is central to this global effort,” said ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen. “The research demonstrates that we can design for biodiversity and start to restore the planet.”
LAF 2023 Landscape Performance Series Case Study Investigations. Cortex Commons. St. Louis, Missouri. SWT Design, Inc. / Jim Diaz
Dr. Park and her team reviewed nearly 70 peer-reviewed studies focused on planning and designing nature-based solutions to biodiversity loss published from 2000 to 2023. They synthesized the findings in an executive summary, which includes case studies and project examples, and a research study.
Park and her team found that:
Heterogeneity and diversity are critical components of healthy ecosystems. This goes beyond the diversity of animal and plant species to include built forms, landscapes, and water bodies.
Landscape architects can design diverse landscapes and restore plant communities that mimic nature in both functional diversity and complexity of structure.
These design strategies enhance insect, bird, reptile, and mammal biodiversity and improve the water retention capabilities of soils and green infrastructure.
It is critical that stakeholders appreciate how everything connects within a socio-ecological system.
Planners and policymakers should take a holistic view when setting biodiversity objectives and planning local or national initiatives.
Park and her team found empirical research points to the success of these strategies in increasing and enhancing biodiversity:
Design for Biodiversity
Incorporate Native Plants
Support Pollinators
Enable Integrated Pest Management
Include Allelopathic and Companion Plants
Incorporate Protected Areas
Transform Grey to Green
Retrofit Grey Infrastructure to Be Green
Design for Slope and Pitch
Design for Building Height and Architecture
Create Bio-solar Roofs
Build Strong Community Coalitions on Biodiversity
Create community partnerships that build trust with stakeholders
Use participatory design processes to build social-ecological communities defined by a shared sense of bio-cultural heritage
Include Indigenous groups and other community stakeholders in the design, biodiversity monitoring and stewardship, and decision-making processes
ASLA 2023 Professional General Design Honor Award. The University of Texas at El Paso Transformation. El Paso, Texas. Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Inc. / Adam Barbe
By Roxanne Blackwell, Caleb Raspler, and Matthew Gallagher
On March 11, the White House released the Budget of the U.S. Government for fiscal year 2025. The proposal includes several increases compared to the fiscal year 2024 budget for climate change, biodiversity, parks, water, and transportation.
While these investments can help advance the goals of landscape architects, ASLA believes there are still more resources needed so landscape architects can continue to shape the built and natural environment of tomorrow.
In advance of this release and following the State of the Union, ASLA sent recommendations to the administration to continue deep investment in nature-based infrastructure solutions as part of its forthcoming budget priorities. ASLA’s recommendations are based on member-reported most accessed federal grant programs, ASLA strategic partnerships, and previously requested federal funding.
Here’s how the President’s budget compared to ASLA’s recommendations:
Climate Change: ASLA recommendations regarding federal climate change initiatives closely aligned with the administration. For example, ASLA suggested $25 billion to address climate impacts affecting communities like floods, wildfires, storms, extreme heat, and drought. The administration proposed a total of $23 billion in 2025 to facilitate climate adaptation and resilience across the federal government that landscape architects can take part in, including the American Climate Corps (ACC) and reducing the embodied carbon of construction materials.
Biodiversity: The President’s budget included funding support for biodiversity initiatives like environmental planning and habitat restoration activities. However, the budget did not include ASLA’s specific request for funding to help state and territorial wildlife agencies implement their Wildlife Action Plans and Tribal National conservation efforts. ASLA will continue to work with Congress to pass the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, which would provide much-needed funds for state biodiversity efforts.
ASLA 2023 Professional General Design Honor Award. The Meadow at the Old Chicago Post Office. Chicago, Illinois. Hoerr Schaudt / Scott Shigley
Active Transportation: Notably, several of the President’s surface transportation budget requests mirror’s ASLA’s recommendations. The fiscal year 2025 President’s budget recommends more than $78 billion to carry out the Federal Highway Administration’s programs, including for surface transportation, roadway safety, transit formula programs, active transportation, and more. The President recommends $14.7 billion for the Surface Transportation Block Grants (ASLA recommends $14.68) and $75 million for the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program (ASLA recommends $75 million).
ASLA 2023 Professional Residential Design Award of Excellence. The Rain Gardens at 900 Block. Lexington, Kentucky. Gresham Smith
However, the President recommends $800 million for the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grants. This falls short of ASLA’s recommended $2 billion. This program invests in infrastructure projects like active transportation, Complete Streets, Transit-Oriented Development, and more.
Water Management and Infrastructure: The President’s budget did not include as much funding for water investments as ASLA requested. ASLA asked for more than $9 billion in funding for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to enhance critical water infrastructure compared to the President’s $7 billion, and more than $3 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) compared to the President’s $1.24 billion.
National Parks and Public Lands: The President’s budget recommends $3.6 billion for the National Park Service (NPS) compared to ASLA’s suggested $5 billion. The budget includes $125 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund’s Outdoor Recreation Legacy Program, $11 million to support new sites that preserve the stories of the cultures and history across America, and $11 million to strengthen co-stewardship of Tribal lands.
Equity and Environmental Justice: As ASLA suggested, the President’s 2025 budget prioritized federal investments that address underserved populations through the Justice40 Initiative. Additionally, the budget included funding for STEM education and workforce development programs emphasizing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Now that landscape architecture is a STEM discipline, these programs can help advance the profession.
ASLA 2023 Professional Urban Design Honor Award. PopCourts! – A Small Plaza That Turned Into a Movement. Chicago, Illinois. The Lamar Johnson Collaborative / Shelby Kroeger
Community Development: ASLA suggested $3.3 billion for the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program to revitalize American neighborhoods compared to the President’s $2.9 billion. Increased investments in this program are needed for landscape architects to continue to support communities and stimulate economic development.
The President’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal serves as a blueprint for his vision for the upcoming fiscal year. However, Congress is ultimately responsible for developing and passing a budget and appropriations measures to fund the federal government’s functions and activities.
ASLA will continue its efforts to work with congressional leaders and coalition partners to pass spending measures that favor the work of landscape architects.
Roxanne Blackwell, Hon. ASLA, is managing director of government affairs at ASLA. Caleb Raspler is manager of federal government affairs at ASLA. Matthew Gallagher is grassroots coordinator at ASLA.
Robert Searns, a trails and greenways planner, offers a fresh take on how to make cities more walkable. He calls for designing “grand loops” on the edges of cities and shorter “town walks,” which are “branded, in-town walking loops” that tie parks, civic spaces, and neighborhoods together. These kinds of trails support good urban design that puts pedestrians’ access to nature and street life first.
The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding, Big and Small / Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023
Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell transformed a 3,500-acre dairy farm in Sussex, United Kingdom into a haven for wild plants and animals, including rare nightingales, turtle doves, and purple emperor butterflies; reintroduced beavers and storks; and free-roaming longhorn cattle, pigs, and ponies. With this vivid 560-page book, they offer a how-to manual on how to increase biodiversity in landscapes of all sizes — from a small backyard to a grand park.
Botanical print lovers will swoon over the hundreds of rare nature impressions depicted in this immersive, oversized book. Matthew Zucker and Pia Östlund have curated prints of leaves, flowers, ferns, seaweed, and even snakes dating from the 1700s to the 1900s. “The value of these illustrations lies in the fact that the plants, often depicted with flowers and roots, show their natural habitat, their bends and twists, their branches and ramifications, their hairs, spines, and thorns in a fidelity to nature that the greatest artist had not been able to reproduce,” writes Ernst Fischer, in one of the book’s essays.
The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life / Scribner, 2023
A study in the journal Science earlier this year found that between 2011 and 2022, light pollution on Earth increased nearly 10 percent. In this book, Swedish bat scientist and writer Johan Eklöf explores the impacts of light pollution on ecosystems and human health and well-being. He calls for incorporating motion-sensors into lighting in parks and on streets to reduce risks for insects, birds, and bats. Eklöf also looks at how Flagstaff, Arizona became the world’s first International Dark Sky City, and France instituted a national policy imposing curfews on outdoor lighting.
The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration / Simon & Schuster, 2023
Journalist Jake Bittle tells the stories of people who have already experienced displacement from floods, fires, hurricanes, and droughts brought on by climate change. He finds that federal, state, and local governments and the insurance industry aren’t prepared for the coming migration and are even enabling further loss of lives, property, and livelihoods. The Great Displacement calls for reforming the national flood insurance system, expanding affordable housing, and increasing post-disaster aid and climate adaptation. Landscape architects and planners can learn about the expected demographic shift northward and inland.
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet / Little, Brown and Company, 2023
This book is a gripping account of the growing danger of extreme heat, which is already the deadliest climate impact. Author and journalist Jeff Goodell outlines what more of the planet’s population will experience in coming decades — and how heat will affect underserved communities the most. From Phoenix to Paris, he looks at how cities are starting to adapt. While clear-eyed about the challenges of planting millions of trees across cities, Goodell sees great hope in what landscape architects do.
Land Art as Climate Action: Designing the 21st Century City Park / Hirmer Publishers, 2023
Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Perry are co-founders and co-directors of the dynamic Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI), which is guided by the idea: “renewable energy can be beautiful.” Since 2010, LAGI has organized global art and design competitions that explore ways to weave renewable energy into our landscapes and create the infrastructure of the future. Featuring 300 color images from past competitions, the book inspires readers to “embrace the beauty, abundance, and cultural vibrancy of a world that has left fossil fuels behind.”
Justice and the Interstates: The Racist Truth About Urban Highways / Island Press
In her review, Diane Jones Allen, FASLA, director and professor of landscape architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington, writes: “This book exposes the intentional methods to remove citizens from their homes and level neighborhoods in the name of progress. Importantly, it also reveals methods for reconciliation, healing urban scars — literally and figuratively — and planning a path forward. In this effort, landscape architects can play a major role.” Read the full review.
Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City / Doubleday, 2023
“Every day an area of land the size of Manhattan gets urbanized,” writes author Ben Wilson, in this historical overview of cities and nature. He argues that the smart way to reduce the damage of global urbanization is to restore the ecological functions of cities. From New York City to Berlin and Singapore, he looks at how inventive cities are leading the way to bring nature back to urban life. Amsterdam “aspires to perform at least as well as a healthy ecosystem.”
Wisdom of Place: Recovering the Sacred Origins of Landscapes / ORO Editions, 2023
“Every day of our lives we are in the presence of genius — what our ancestor called the genius loci, or spirit of place,” write husband and wife co-authors Chip Sullivan, FASLA, professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Berkeley, and Elizabeth Boults, ASLA, landscape architect and lecturer in human ecology at the University of California, Davis. Through 78 beautiful drawings of tarot cards, they guide readers in rediscovering the “sacredness of everyday landscapes” and reconnecting with the “creative forces” of nature. They view the images in the book as “pathways to enchantment” and a means to reinvest landscapes with spiritual values.
Buying these books through THE DIRT or ASLA’s online bookstore benefits ASLA educational programs.
Nature-based solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss are more than mangroves, forests, and grasslands. Using landscape architecture strategies, they can be woven into places where people live. They can take the form of parks, recreation areas, streets, coastal infrastructure, and more. Through inclusive design, they can provide even greater benefits to people and support the healthy urban ecosystems people rely on.
While more communities are integrating nature-based solutions, those advances are not widespread. All communities need equitable access to best practices, project financing, and the landscape architecture, planning, ecology, and engineering professionals who make these projects a reality.
ASLA 2023 Professional Landmark Award. Vista Hermosa Park Natural Park, Los Angeles, California. Studio-MLA / Tom Lamb
Landscape architects design nature-based solutions to create real benefits for people and communities:
1) Increased Biodiversity
Nature-positive landscapes are the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems and efforts to achieve 30 x 2030 and 10% net biodiversity goals, restore global ecosystems, and increase and protect biodiversity.
2) Improved Human Health and Livability
Accessible public landscapes, such as parks and recreation areas, provide proven physical and mental health benefits that reduce healthcare costs and increase community cohesion.
3) Going Beyond Net-Zero
Landscapes are the most efficient way to store carbon and achieve zero embodied and operational emissions and double carbon sequestration by 2040.
4) Strengthened Resilience
Healthy, biodiverse landscapes that store carbon in trees, plants, and soils also increase people’s resilience to climate impacts, such as extreme heat, flooding, drought, and sea level rise.
5) Expanded Investment and Sustainable Livelihoods
When woven into communities, nature-based solutions become resilient assets that lead to increased investment in housing, infrastructure, and public amenities, and create sustainable local livelihoods.
ASLA 2019 Professional General Design Honor Award. Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park Honor Award. Bangkok, Thailand. LANDPROCESS
All three speakers will be presenting in these blue zone sessions:
Scaling Up Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Environments
Wednesday, December 6, 4.15 AM – 5.15 AM EST / 1:15 PM – 2:15 PM GST
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Pavilion Livestream
Nature-based Solutions & the Built Environment: Designing for Resilience, Drawdown & Biodiversity
Friday, December 8, 7.45 AM – 9.15 AM EST / 4.45 PM – 6.15 PM GST
Official COP28 Blue Zone Side Event, SE Room 9
ASLA virtual delegates joining online include:
Diane Jones Allen, FASLA, Director, Program in Landscape Architecture, University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), Principal Landscape Architect, DesignJones, LLC, and Member, ASLA Climate Action Plan Task Force
Aida Curtis, FASLA, Founding Principal, Curtis + Rogers Design Studio; and Co-Chair ASLA Biodiversity and Climate Action Committee Subcommittee on Climate Leadership and Communications
Sarah Fitzgerald, ASLA, Associate, SWA, and Member, ASLA Climate Action Plan Task Force
Yu is founder of the Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and founder and principal designer of Turenscape. His firm, which has a staff of more than 400, plans and designs landscapes that “combat flooding while repairing ecological damage.”
“The award means that no matter our differences among peoples and nations, there is one common ground we have to hold together: taking care of planet Earth. We have to get together to heal this ill planet,” Yu said.
He also sees the award as a win for developing countries like China. “It is a huge encouragement for those who are working hard to establish themselves from the grassroots; for those who made their career in underdeveloped regions, in the most difficult parts of the world.”
In an interview, Yu offered his thoughts on future opportunities and challenges for landscape architects. He outlined his design philosophy and how it can serve as a roadmap for leadership on nature-based solutions and climate and biodiversity action.
Yu foresees an explosion in demand for landscape architects in China and other developing countries. “I am expecting revolutionary development of the profession of landscape architecture in the developing world where landscape architects are badly needed.”
ASLA 2014 Professional General Design Honor Award. Slow Down: Liupanshui Minghu Wetland Park. Liupanshui, Guizhou Province, China. TURENSCAPE
“I believe landscape architects are coming into a golden era. We are positioning ourselves at the forefront in the battle for climate adaptation and planetary healing, particularly in China, India, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa, where climate change is mingled with issues of urbanization, industrialization, and food security.”
“But there are also many obstacles that landscape architects need to overcome,” he added.
“The top obstacle is our lack of capacity. We need to breakthrough the boundaries of professional and disciplinary stratification. This will involve restructuring institutions, changing school programs, and redefining landscape architecture at a much larger scope, toward the art of survival.”
Yu founded his China-based firm Turenscape in 1998 with an ambitious goal — “nature, man, and spirits as one.”
“Tu-Ren is two characters in Chinese. Tu means dirt, earth, or the land, while Ren means people, man, or human being. Once these two characters come together, Tu-ren, it means ‘Earth Man,’ a relationship between land and people. The firm’s philosophy is to recreate the harmony between land and people and create sustainable environments for the future. We act in the name of the Heaven (Nature) and as messengers of the spirits of our native forebears,” he explained.
ASLA 2010 Professional General Design Award of Excellence. Shanghai Houtan Park: Landscape as a Living System. Shanghai, China. TURENSCAPE
Yu brings that philosophy to his work planning and designing nature-based solutions that integrate wetlands, mangroves, and forests.
“Any sustainable landscape is nature-based. Landscape is a synonym for nature when one discusses landscape architecture in the context of its sister professions such as architecture and urban planning. Landscape architecture is about using knowledge and skills related to adaptation, transformation, and the management of nature to harness ecosystem services — such as provision, regulation, life support, beauty, and spiritual benefit — for humanity’s long-term and short-term needs. This is the essential core of nature-based solutions.”
ASLA 2020 Professional General Design Honor Award. Deep Form of Designed Nature: Sanya Mangrove Park. Sanya City, Hainan Province, China. TURENSCAPE
And he also shared some news about how his combined practice and academic work are advancing these goals. “The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Peking University to establish a joint research program at our campus focusing on nature-based solution best practices. This is largely the landscape planning, design, and management work of Turenscape.”
Yu believes landscape architects’ ability to bring together multiple disciplines and leverage science and engineering will help solve the climate crisis.
“Landscape architects play a key role in addressing climate change, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, particularly the latter. Landscape architecture is the cornerstone of the intellectual mansion of arts, sciences, and engineering that jointly stand together to address climate change. That is why I am so glad to see landscape architecture recently listed as a STEM discipline in the U.S.”
He envisions landscape architects leading the way, pulling together a range of professions to form enduring solutions.
“Ian McHarg defined a landscape architect as a conductor, who orchestrates disciplines and professionals and integrates all abiotic and biotic processes into a harmoniously performing ecosystem through the skill of designing in the physical medium of landscape.”
ASLA 2010 Professional General Design Honor Award. The Red Ribbon – Tanghe River Park, Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, China. TURENSCAPE and Peking University Graduate School of Landscape Architecture
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in Sackett vs EPA that ended federal protections of some kinds of wetlands and tributaries under the U.S. Clean Water Act.
Like many organizations, ASLA released a statement condemning the decision. ASLA found the ruling “short-sighted” because it “ignores science and the well-documented hydrological understanding of the interconnection of water sources.”
This statement was rooted in ASLA’s long-held, science-based policy positions on the waters of the United States and wetlands, and a legacy of comments sent to administrations, including the Biden-Harris administration during its last rule making process in 2022. ASLA’s positions were crafted from feedback from members who found recent definitions of waters of the U.S. and policies unclear and not grounded in hydrological or climate science.
According to a national poll issued by The New York Times, 72 percent of Americans also disagreed with the recent Supreme Court decision and believe the “Clean Water Act should be read broadly and include things like wetlands.”
And as landscape architects and ecologists know, “what is a wetland isn’t as black and white as the Supreme Court defined,” said Steven Spears, FASLA, project principal with Momark Development and GroundWork.
“The Supreme Court decision was wrong for a number of reasons,” said Keith Bowers, FASLA, president and founder of Biohabitats and a professional wetland scientist. “The decision was not based on science.”
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the recent Supreme Court ruling defines waters of the U.S. as “relatively permanent bodies of water connected to traditional navigable waters.”
It defined some wetlands as waters of the U.S. if they have a “continuous surface connection to other jurisdictional waters, so that there is no clear demarcation between the bodies.” But the decision excludes other wetlands that are “neighboring waters but are separated by natural or artificial barriers.”
“The ruling interpreted wetland adjacency differently. The Supreme Court said a wetland needs to have a surface nexus with a stream, river, or navigable water to be federally protected. But we know wetlands are connected to other water bodies through both groundwater and surface flows, which may be continuous or not,” Bowers said.
“There is a lot to unpack with the Supreme Court ruling and more clarity will come in time,” Spears said. But the Supreme Court decision “just sees wetlands on a black and white basis. It also fails to account for wetland quality.”
The Sacketts sued the EPA in 2008 because it classified wetlands on their property in Idaho as waters of the U.S. The wetlands were near a ditch that fed into a creek, which then fed into Priest Lake, a navigable, intrastate lake.
In its recent decision, the Supreme Court essentially found that “the wetlands were not waters of the U.S. because they were separated from the lake by a road – even though they were connected to the lake under that road by a culvert,” Spears said.
Spears thinks it’s possible the wetlands in question were low-quality and that filling them in had little impact on the broader water quality of the lake. But it’s hard to tell because the ecosystem services of the particular wetlands weren’t measured.
“The Supreme Court decision is frustrating because it just states a wetland is either a wetland or not, regardless of the performance of the wetland and what ecosystem services it provides.”
At Austin Green in Austin, Texas, Spears and his firm, GroundWork, led a redevelopment of a former sandy gravel mine that was created before the Clean Water Act went into effect in 1972.
The brownfield site included both high-quality wetlands and other low-quality wetlands that happened to form out of the dredging process. The 2,100-acre redevelopment preserves and enhances more than 850 acres of high-performing wetlands and other ecological assets as part of a public park along the Colorado River.
Austin Green development / Lionheart Places, courtesy of GroundWork
The team – which included landscape architects at Lionheart Places and ecologists at ACI Consulting – used the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Ft. Worth District’s Texas Rapid Assessment Model (TRAM) to score the ecological service quality of the wetlands on the site and win approval of the project.
“We used the tool to conduct a land suitability analysis and planning process.This process informed the landscape architecture-led planning and design team as to which environmental systems were most desirable for protection and enhancement.”
“The model was used to identify high-quality wetlands that scored a 70 out of 100. We focused on how to raise their quality level to an 80 or 90. The redevelopment plan and park and open space network were curated around these ecological assets. There were also low-quality wetlands that scored a 1 out of 100, and some of those were filled in. What’s important to figure out is how a wetland performs, what is their worth. And if you need to fill in a wetland, mitigate or offset that elsewhere.”
While he doesn’t support the Supreme Court ruling, “now that it is the law of the land, how do we move forward?”
Spears wants to see a tool like the Army Corps’ TRAM as a national approach, with adjustments for important regional wetland and geomorphological differences. He noted that some Army Corps districts have wetland scoring tools and some don’t.
“Landscape architects can lean in and help establish the criteria for a new wetland scoring system. That will help us get away from ‘this is a wetland and that is not.’ We need to influence and help create a new wetland modeling process.”
Bowers thinks the ruling will open up lots of land and wetlands that were historically regulated to new development that will not be subject to federal approvals.
He thinks this is bad news for watersheds overall. “If you impact a river at its mouth, it won’t impact the system. But if you impact the wetlands – the headwaters – the water system can collapse. Wetlands are where you establish the ecological processes and then they migrate down the ecosystem.”
“I think all wetlands should be protected, as some wetlands that are low-quality today may not have been historically. As landscape architects, we should not impact any wetland if it’s in our power. With the climate and biodiversity crises, we need wetlands to sequester carbon and provide habitat. We need to do everything to minimize or mitigate impacts.”
For him, tools like TRAM can be useful in prioritizing which wetlands to save and restore. But he thinks the evaluation of any particular wetland’s quality should be rooted in a broader understanding of the watershed in which the wetland exists. He said the Supreme Court decision will increase the importance of watershed planning and the role of landscape architects in comprehensive planning for water resources.
The ruling also muddies the waters, so to speak, about how ephemeral waters will be considered in the future, potentially opening up future litigation.
According to CRS, “the majority opinion does not explicitly address ephemeral waters, which flow only in response to precipitation, or intermittent waters, which flow continuously during certain times of year, such as when snow pack melts. At a minimum, the majority’s interpretation would appear to exclude ephemeral waters.”
But a majority of Supreme Court justices also recognized that “‘temporary interruptions in surface connection’ – such as from low tides or dry spells” – happen in wetlands. “It is not clear how temporary such an interruption must be in order to preserve a wetland’s jurisdictional status.”
Hearing this, Spears seemed exasperated. In Texas, this lack of clarity on seasonal waters may impact how ephemeral streams and agricultural stock tanks are considered. “The Supreme Court seemed to create more problems than they solved.”
As regulations are rewritten, he sees opportunities for landscape architects to offer their deep expertise in designing with water and creating innovative approaches. He wants landscape architects to shape the next generation of water policy. “The reaction to Sackett vs EPA that is coming can help solve our water problems over the long-term.”
For Bowers, it’s important for landscape architects to be strong advocates for the preservation and restoration of wetlands through their projects and in their communities. “Try to insert policy standards and push for updates to zoning regulations.” And landscape architects can reach out to their Congressional representatives. “Legislators need to further clarify the definition of waters of the U.S.”
Since 1972, the Clean Water Act has protected the country’s aquatic environments from pollution. It was created by Congress to keep water bodies safe for wildlife and fishing and swimming. It has also protected communities’ drinking water supplies.
After the Act established federal jurisdiction over navigable waters, there have been a number of rulings by the Supreme Court. This is because the Clean Water Act never clearly defined what waters of the U.S. meant and instead authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and EPA to create that definition through regulations.
Legislators understood that it comprised “all the relevant parts of an aquatic ecosystem, including streams, wetlands, and small ponds—things that aren’t necessarily connected to the tributary system on the surface, but that still bear all kinds of ecological relationships to that system and to one another.”
And up until the 2000s, NRDC says, that inclusive definition of the waters of the U.S. was largely upheld through court cases.
The Supreme Court ruling in May came after multiple lawsuits filed in opposition to the Biden-Harris administration waters of the U.S. definition, which went into effect March 20, 2023. Those lawsuits halted implementation of the use of the definition in 27 states.
After the Sackett vs EPA decision, new guidance on the waters of the U.S. is being developed by the EPA and will be released in September.
The EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will also need to revise or amend a slew of regulations to be compliant with the Supreme Court decision.
To be specific, the ruling impacts many EPA regulations and programs that rely on a definition of waters of the U.S., including:
Water quality standards and total maximum daily loads
Oil spill prevention and preparedness programs
State and tribal certification under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act
Pollutant discharge permits
Dredged and fill material permits
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates in close collaboration with the EPA, will also need to update or revise its approach to military and civil engineering projects and permits that involve non-tidal and tidal wetlands.
Changes to these federal regulations and programs will also lead to cascading revisions of state regulations.
The Clean Water Act requires that state regulations adhere to its minimum requirements. It also allows states to go beyond the Clean Water Act and issue more stringent regulations. Some states have surpassed the federal level of water protection, while others have passed laws stating that only the bare federal minimum will be followed.
