Sustainable Environments, LLC A Mitigation Banking Company An environmental mitigation bank is an area managed for its ecological resource values. Within the bank site critical ecosystem functions are restored, enhanced, or preserved for the purpose of compensating for impacts to similar resources elsewhere. The concept of a "bank" refers to the general act of "banking" or storing credits that are assigned to the ecological value that is created through the act of the restoration, enhancement or preservation. These credits can be sold or traded to those (debtors) who need to mitigate for impacts they will have of the same ecological type, and in the same ecological region. Background on Wetland Mitigation Banking: It was the Clean Water Act of 1972, and similar legislation in a number of states, require any necessary impact of wetlands to be avoided, minimized, or mitigated, that created the opportunity to create wetland mitigation banks. Mitigation can be performed in two ways: 1. Self-mitigation, a process in which the entity damaging the wetlands must create another wetland of equal or greater ecological value in the same “service area” (a term meaning the same ecological region). This is very difficult, costly and time consuming. 2. The purchase a “credit” or right to an already created or mitigated wetland from a wetland mitigation bank in the same service area. It is essentially the failure of self-mitigation that forced the United States Army Corps of Engineers (the Army Corps) and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA) to rethink the process of mitigation, and to create the concept of mitigation banking. Self-mitigation historically has had a success rate of only 50% (and in some areas much lower than that), while mitigation banks have a success rate approaching 100%. This disparity is the result of four main factors: • Mitigation banks are held to a higher standard, are more thoroughly planned and are continually monitored by the Army Corps and the EPA. • Mitigation banks are usually placed in better locations, that is, they are usually historical wetlands that are being restored, rather than wetlands created in locations that will not usually support them. • Mitigation banks, because of their large size, average around 100 acres compared to on-site self-mitigation of 1-2 acres, are more ecologically resilient and robust and therefore are better able to sustain themselves through drought periods. Because of this larger size, mitigation banks also are more ecologically diverse and therefore are more ecologically valuable. • Mitigation banks are put in trust to third parties (land trusts, non-profits environmental groups) that oversee their health and provide maintenance whose costs are sourced through a maintenance bond. Background on Conservation Banking: This same concept was later brought to bare, beginning in 1985 in California, on the issue of impact of habitat used by endangered species, or endangered species themsleves; this type of mitigation banking is usually referred to as Conservation Banking. For a more detailed history and account of Mitigation Banking, please contact Sustainable Environments, LLC, and we will gladly email you a copy of the "Primer on Environmental Banking" by Dr. Kevin Noon, who is Co-founder of Sustainable Environments, LLC. FAQ