- Well hey there, how's it going?
This is Seth Williams from REtipster dot com.
In this video we're gonna talk about wetlands.
Specifically, what are wetlands,
how do you know when you're looking at a property
that has a wetlands on it, and also,
for land investors like us, why wetlands can be a problem.
So to kick this off, I'm just going to show you
the US Environmental Protection Agency's definition
of how wetlands are identified
and you can see here it says,
"wetlands are areas that are inundated
or saturated by surface or ground water
at a frequency and duration..."
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, I'm already falling asleep.
That's really boring and kinda confusing.
Essentially what it comes down to if you take the time
to read that through and really process what it's saying
and then also sort of read
the follow up explanation in this article.
It's basically saying that wetlands are areas
where there is a frequent or prolonged presence of water,
either on the soil or near the surface of the soil
that sort of creates a natural ecosystem,
where certain kinds of plants can grow
and fish or wildlife can use it as a habitat.
When most people think about wetlands,
they think about things like this.
Like marshes, where you see lots of grass
that sort of grows through the water
or swamps, where it's kind of like a lake
with trees growing up through it
or bogs like this or fens like this
and the truth is, yes, these are all obvious examples
of wetlands and they're really easy to identify
because you can just look at it
and you see the water or the vegetation
that makes it pretty evident that there is
some kind of wetland habitat going on here.
But the trouble with this definition here is
that it doesn't stop with swamps,
marshes, bogs or similar areas.
Something most of us are familiar with
or have heard of before are the Everglades in Florida,
which is just a massive wetland area down here,
but the interesting thing about the Everglades is that,
depending on what time of the year
you're looking at certain parts of the land,
you may or may not see the presence of any water.
It is entirely possible that you could be walking through
the Everglades, or for that matter, any other wetland area
and you could be walking on solid, seemingly dry ground
and you would never guess that that is a wetland area,
but based on this definition here,
it very well could be wetlands.
Now, wetlands are really important to the world
because they provide all kinds of benefits
and just act as a natural resource for fish,
and animals, and plants, and even people.
We essentially need wetlands.
We can't just destroy them or fill them in
with dirt because they're in the way.
These pieces of land are really valuable
to the overall ecosystem and we don't want them to go away
and that's why pretty much anywhere
you go in the United States,
there are Federal and State laws
that prohibit you from destroying wetlands.
You can't just go build a house
in a wetland area even if it looks dry.
If it's considered wetlands then it's pretty much off limits
unless you get a permit from the US Army Core of Engineers
and any state governing bodies
that have the issue permits, as well.
So even though wetlands are a good thing
to the world in general, they can kind of be a nightmare
for land investors because if you buy a piece of land
and find out after the fact
that there are wetlands on that land,
then pretty much whatever portion
of the land that's affected by those wetlands,
you're kind of stuck with and can't do anything with it
unless you somehow miraculously get the permits you need,
which is not likely to happen because the government
does not want you to destroy wetland areas.
I actually experienced this myself a few years back
when I bought a property that was just a beautiful,
amazing property over here on Lake Huron.
It's right over here.
So this was the parcel right here. It was 12 acres.
On the surface, it was like just an amazing property
because it was huge and it had about 500 feet of lakefront.
Everything about it looked great.
I bought it for 4,500 bucks, which is a steal
but that's beside the point.
The issue I encountered with this property
was that after I bought it, I was informed
that a huge portion of this property was considered wetlands
so I had to find out pretty quick
what portion of the property was actually build-able
and usable for somebody to put a residence on the property.
So eventually, after panicking for a few days,
I contacted a local wetlands consultants
and also got a surveyor to do a survey
and after all that was done
and I had paid a good chunk of change for everything,
I was able to get a few different things.
One of those things was this crudely drawn map
indicating where the actual wetland area was on the property
and where it stopped and where I could actually
build something if I wanted to and essentially,
the wetlands covered this whole area.
There was a little spot of land
that had a slightly higher elevation
and came out of that wetland area
and then there was also this spot
way over by the road where you could build a house
because this not considered wetlands.
Pretty much about 80% of these 12 acres
was not build-able because of the presence of wetlands.
I also had this survey done,
which indicated that about half the property
was covered in the 100 year flood line, as well.
So that was fairly unfortunate
that I figured that out after I owned the property.
Luckily, I was still able to sell the property
for 45,000 bucks so it didn't end up being a bad deal for me
because I had bought it at such a stinkin' low price,
but if those wetlands issues hadn't been there,
I probably could have sold this thing
for closer to like a few hundred thousand dollars
because somebody would actually be able to
build their house right on the shore, overlooking the lake,
but because of these issues, you couldn't do that
and it significantly impacted the value of the property
when it came time to sell it.
And even though I finally got the survey done
and the wetlands delineation all finalized,
even though it all worked out,
this experience, though, has kind of haunted me
because I didn't ever want this to happen again
where I would buy a property without really truly knowing
what was going on with the wetlands situation
and then finding out after the fact that, oh,
this property isn't nearly as useful as you thought
or it's potentially even completely useless
because the entire thing is covered with wetlands
and you didn't have a way to figure that out beforehand.
To me, that was unacceptable and luckily,
I did eventually even discover this website
from the US Fish & Wildlife Service
and the FWS has this thing called the "Wetlands Mapper,"
which is a pretty incredible resource
and it's free and I'm gonna have a link
to this page right beneath this video.
Once you get to this page, you just have to go down here
and click on the "Wetlands Mapper" and then go ahead
and agree to the terms and conditions
and it's going to pull up this map
and essentially what you can do is,
making sure that wetlands is checked,
you can go ahead and zoom in on any property
that you're looking for and find out whether or not
there's any indication of a presence
of a wetlands on that property.
So I'm gonna go ahead and zoom in
on this property we're talking about here
and we can see what it looks like
and I'll show you how this works.
Go ahead and zoom in here.
Okay, so we can see it right here.
This is the property right there and as you can see,
if I had known about this
back before I bought this property,
it would have been really easy to come right here
and see this map, which shows very clearly that, yes,
there is some kind of presence of wetlands right there
and it does take up about 80% of the property.
And granted this map here
from the National Wetlands Inventory does not necessarily
show the exact same thing as the one
that I got from the US Army Core,
but both of the maps do agree
that there is the presence of wetlands on this property.
Now the nice thing is that you can also download
this KML file, which is updated on a regular basis
and if you've got the desktop version
of Google Earth on your computer,
this can work with that software to show you
all the exact same information in a way
that's a little bit more flexible and easy to work with
so let's go ahead and download this.
And by the way, I'm gonna have a link to this page
beneath the video, as well,
in case you want to check this out,
but once you've downloaded that, you just have to go ahead
and open it up and I'm just gonna go ahead
and drag this right onto the Google Earth window.
And as soon as we do that, you'll notice
that there's all this new information
that pops up over here in your sidebar
and you'll also notice a lot more color here in your map.
If we go ahead and zoom back in on that same property,
we can see pretty much the exact same thing
and there you go.
You'll see pretty much the exact information,
it's just that now it's in Google Earth,
not in this web browser over here on the other page.
So, either which way you want to do it is fine
and something you'll kind of notice
if you sort of zoom out and look at
the entire Continental United States,
you'll notice that certain regions around the country
that have a lot more color than others.
Place like North and South Dakota, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Michigan, some spots in New England,
and then if you follow pretty much the entire East Coast
all the way down to Florida, and then much of the South,
there's a lot of areas here
that have a much higher likelihood
of being impacted by wetlands.
And, of course, if you sort of draw a line
right down the middle of the country,
most of the Western United States
is pretty clear of wetlands.
You're obviously gonna see little spots here and there
so it's not something you can completely ignore,
but for the most part, if you're buyin'
and sellin' land in this area of the country,
wetlands is gonna be much less of a concern than if you were
working over in these areas of the country.
I think pretty much wherever you're working in the US,
this isn't something you should generally ignore.
This is something you should probably
be looking at before buying any property,
but as you can see in the Western United States,
it's just a much less common issue
that you'll have to encounter.
Now, just to be completely clear about this,
using this kind of mapping tool is not the same thing
as actually hiring a wetlands consultant
and or getting the US Army Core of Engineers
onto your property to do their own delineation
and find out where the presence of wetlands are
and actually draw the boundaries themselves.
As you can see what this map tells me is not
exactly the same thing as what this drawing told me.
It was pretty similar, but I wouldn't necessarily
take this as the gospel truth.
In fact, if you actually look at the
"Data Limitations, Exclusions, and Precautions"
that you have to agree to before you even use this,
it spells out pretty clearly that there are
no guarantees with this kind of mapping service.
It says that, "the Service's objective
is to produce reconnaissance level information
of the location, type, and size of these resources.
A margin or error is inherent in the use of imagery,
thus detailed on-the-ground inspection of any particular
site may result in revision of the wetlands boundaries
or classification established through image analysis."
What I take away from this is that these maps
are not like the final word on if and when
there are wetlands present, it's just sort of an indicator.
So if you're just looking for like any obvious red flags
on a property, this is a pretty good place to start
but it's not like a 100% guarantee until you actually
have somebody go out to the property and inspect it on-site.
But with that said, if you're just looking for
the fastest and easiest way to see any
potential wetland activity on your property,
be sure to check out this website.
Again, I'm gonna link to both pages beneath this video
so you can either check it out in your web browser
or check it out in Google Earth.
Thanks for watching.
I hope that was helpful and I'll see you next time.