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FACT By law, ski areas on all lands-public and private-are required to protect historic marshes. Even ditches, ponds and storage reservoirs that are built by ski areas may attract hydric plants and thus become permanently classified as wetlands by the U.S. Corps of Engineers. If there is no way for a project to avoid impacting a wetland, the ski area is obliged to mitigate for the loss either by creating new wetland habitat or by buying it elsewhere (usually in the same watershed) from a private owner and deeding it to the government.