Flood control and water availability. Water quality - they purify water by processing nutrients, suspended materials and other pollutants. The Environmental Protection Agency offers a toll-free hotline that is responsive to public interest, questions and requests for information about the values and functions of wetlands and options for their protection. Researchers believe Carolina bays are 30,000 to 100,000 years old or older, yet scientists are not certain of their origins. One theory of the origin of Carolina bays suggests that a meteor hit Earth thousands of years ago, breaking into pieces that made dents as they skipped across the planet's surface.
Some people consider Carolina bays to be annoying wet spots.
Farmers commonly plowed through them and builders filled and paved over them until federal wetlands regulations began protecting them in the mid-1970s. Still, Carolina bays and other wetlands continue to be lost to agriculture and commercial development. More than 97 percent of the Carolina bays once found in South Carolina have been destroyed or severely altered. More protected Carolina bays are found on the SRS than in the remainder of South Carolina. The United States has lost more than half of its original wetland areas.