What Is Mitigation Banking?

It's a wetland, stream, or other aquatic resource area that has been restored or enhanced for the purpose of providing compensation for unavoidable impacts to aquatic resources.

Where Did Mitigation Banking Come From?

A mitigation bank is created when an entity undertakes the activities of restoring, establishing, or enhancing an aquatic resource areas under a formal agreement with the regulatory agencies. This activity is in accordance with Section 404 and state or local wetland regulations. In the United States, federal agencies , as well as many state and local governments, require mitigation or 'offset' for the disturbance or destruction of wetland, stream, or endangered species habitat.

Mitigation banks have four distinct components

  • Site Area: The identified physical acreage of the area to be preserved, enhanced, restored, or created. 
  • Agreement: The formal agreement between regulatory agencies and the bank owner, which establishes liability and success of the mitigation bank.
  • Interagency Review Team (IRT): The IRT team provides regulatory review, approval, and oversight of all bank activity.
  • Service Area: The geographic area that permitted impacts can be compensated for through the bank. 

The goal is to replace the exact function and value of specific habitats that would be adversely affected by a proposed activity or project. The value of a bank is defined in "compensatory mitigation credits."

How Does Mitigation Banking Help?

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Benefits of Mitigation Banking

Mitigation banking has a number of advantages over traditional compensatory mitigation because of the ability of mitigation banking programs to:

Reduce uncertainty over whether the compensatory mitigation will be successful in offsetting project impacts.

Assemble and apply extensive financial resources, planning, and scientific expertise not always available to many compensatory mitigation proposals.

Reduce permit processing times and provide more cost-effective mitigation opportunities.

Enable the efficient use of limited agency resources in the review and compliance monitoring.

What are Mitigation Credits?

A mitigation bank generates credits for the amount and quality of habitat the bank site improves. Mitigation credits to compensate for riparian impacts may be assigned in relation to the linear distance of a stream functioning at the highest possible capacity within the watershed of the bank. Mitigation credits are determined based on bank acreage, functional units, and other metrics. The estimated potential number of credits a bank may earn can vary based on ecological performance of the bank.

When the IRT releases potential bank credits, they become available credits, meaning they can be purchased for ecological offset.

Tye River Mitigation Bank Credits Are Available

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Tye River Mitigation Bank
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