New EPA Wetland Guidelines to Boost Mitigation Banks
by Alice Kenny
The US Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers just released their long-awaited regulations for offsetting lost wetlands. They should mean a major boost for mitigation banking.
A highly-anticipated wetland compensatory mitigation rule that promotes wetland mitigation banking while pushing back its competitors was outlined Monday in a joint press conference by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In an unusual move responding to intense public interest and impatience, the agencies presented their long-awaited Final Compensatory Wetland Mitigation Rule to the press before publishing it in the Federal Registrar.
The new standards encourage the expansion of mitigation banking to provide compensatory mitigation for unavoidable impacts to the nation's wetlands and streams. They create a hierarchy that clearly spells out the agency's preference for this form of mitigation over its current competitors, said EPA Assistant Administrator for Water, Benjamin H Grumbles. Until now, developers destroying wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act could choose from three options to address these damages. They could replace the wetlands they destroyed themselves; they could pay in-lieu-fee providers, typically nonprofit corporations, to replace them at some future time; or they could buy "credits" from wetland mitigation banks that proactively restore, enhance or create wetlands.
