Federal flood engineers chose to buy wetlands instead of building reservoirs.

Evidence

At first, the argument about the hydrological value of wetlands was rudimentary, relying on a kind of common sense. But a number of scientific studies in the 1960s and 1970s corroborated the insight, at least in part, and eventually the nation’s flood-control experts acknowledged the functional value of wetlands preservation. In the early 1970s, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to buy 8,500 acres of wetlands instead of building a reservoir or a system of dikes to control flooding outside of Boston. “Nature has already provided the least cost solution to future flooding in the form of extensive wetlands which moderate extreme highs and lows in stream flow,” the Corps explained. “Rather than attempt to improve on this natural protection mechanism, it is both prudent and economical to leave the hydrologic regime established over the millennia undisturbed.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 646

Categorization

• CANDY: The Army Corps buying nature to replace its own dikes — an institution famous for channelizing rivers conceding wetlands are the cheaper fix — is a good surprising elevator fact.
• SHARE: For someone in water law or civil engineering: the Corps’ 8,500-acre Boston-area purchase as documented institutional embrace of wetlands over gray infrastructure.
• XREF: connects to: Wetlands buffer floods more cheaply than engineered flood control. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 645; Floods, not engineering foresight, saved the marsh from drainage — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 42; Engineers framed preserved wetlands as natural flood-control infrastructure — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 510