§1301 — Title 16 Conservation | U.S. Code

Summary

Congress requires protecting, restoring, and improving the Nation’s wetlands because doing so gives many public benefits. These include saving surface water, improving habitat for waterfowl and other wildlife, cutting runoff, erosion, and flood risk, improving water quality and soil moisture, retiring some farmland, and making the landscape nicer. The Secretary of Agriculture must create and run an ongoing program to stop serious wetland loss and to preserve, restore, and improve wetlands. That program must begin on July 1, 1971.

Title 16, §1301

Conservation — Source: USLM XML via OLRC

The Congress finds that it is in the public interest to preserve, restore, and improve the wetlands of the Nation, and thereby to conserve surface waters, to preserve and improve habitat for migratory waterfowl and other wildlife resources, to reduce runoff, soil and wind erosion, and contribute to flood control, to contribute to improved water quality and reduce stream sedimentation, to contribute to improved subsurface moisture, to reduce acres of new land coming into production and to retire lands now in agricultural production, to enhance the natural beauty of the landscape, and to promote comprehensive and total water management planning. The Secretary of Agriculture (hereinafter in this chapter referred to as the “Secretary”) is authorized and directed to formulate and carry out a continuous program to prevent the serious loss of wetlands, and to preserve, restore, and improve such lands, which program shall begin on July 1, 1971.

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Short Title

Pub. L. 91–559, § 1, Dec. 19, 1970, 84 Stat. 1468, provided: “That this Act [enacting this chapter] may be cited as the ‘Water Bank Act’.”

§1301 Congressional Declaration of Policy; Authority of Secretary

Summary

Title 16, §1301

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Short Title

Citations & Metadata