Waiting for the DOD

It isn't always that you know a bomb is about fall. And it can be an unnerving experience. Particularly if you know it is coming, but you don't know when, nor how big its explosion.

And yet that is the state that wetland mitigation bankers find themselves in this new year. The bomb they are awaiting, suitably enough, comes from the Department of Defense via the US Army Corps of Engineers. Two years ago, in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal year 2004, section 314, the US Government called on the US Army Corps of Engineers--the government entity responsible for overseeing wetland mitigation banking in the US--to "issue regulations establishing performance standards and criteria for use of on-site, off-site, and in-lieu fee mitigation and mitigation banking." While this language may not seem like much, it was followed by some text that some mitigation bankers have called "the most significant piece of legislation to come out in the short-lived history of the mitigation banking industry." (see New Regulations could mean Big Business for US Mitigation Bankers?).

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