The Cascade and Olympic Agendas focus on a future for this region that is both environmentally sound and economically strong. To get there, we need new growth with limited impacts to our natural areas. This means we need to develop in ways where we avoid impacts. But, when impacts are unavoidable, we must smartly mitigate our impacts. Mitigation should serve the business needs of our communities while enhancing the resources of our natural areas. 

Through the environmental review process, a series of actions are identified for a developer to take to avoid and minimize damage to sensitive natural areas. If impacts are unavoidable, developers must mitigate through restoration or enhancement of other areas. These actions are required by a number of environmental laws and must occur before the developer may begin construction.
Studies show that wetland mitigation projects have experienced limited levels of success. This means that our region’s development activity is resulting in direct losses to the quality of our environment, despite regulatory requirements.

There are ways to improve our success.  Success in protecting our natural areas while bolstering local businesses. Forterra is partnering with other organizations to explore new approaches and tools for improving the effectiveness of environmental mitigation and accessibility to these tools. We are encouraging a concept called watershed-based mitigation. This approach uses land and water science to improve how and where we focus development and conservation efforts.  This approach is consistent with the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Watershed Characterization efforts. 

In the recent past, wetland mitigation was typically done on the development site itself. Studies show that this approach, typically called “on-site and in-kind,” had some limitations. On-site mitigation projects were typically surrounded by development and suffered from pollution, high-impact activities, and lack of proper soil and water conditions. 

Watershed-based mitigation may help make mitigation more successful. With watershed-based mitigation, science about the surrounding landscape is used to decide where the unavoidable impacts can best be offset. This may be on the site, off the site, or a mixture of both. Developers who need to offset their impacts can connect with experienced restoration specialists via an offset market. These specialists can then undertake the required restoration, thus providing flexibility and improved environmental systems.

New Tools: Mitigation Banking and In-Lieu Fee Programs

Projects that take the watershed-based approach can be completed on a project-by-project basis, so that a single restoration project is undertaken to offset a single development project.  More exciting, however, are the market-based tools that pool smaller development impacts together and offset them with a larger restoration project. Mitigation banks and in-lieu-fee programs are examples of this strategy.
 

Mitigation Banking

Mitigation banks enable developers whose projects result in unavoidable impacts to wetlands to buy "credits" from an approved wetland mitigation bank instead of performing their own mitigation.  Through purchasing the credits, the regulatory responsibility is transferred from the developer to the bank.  Mitigation banks are located within the same watershed and positioned where high quality, successful restoration can occur.  This creates larger, more ecologically effective wetlands that provide lasting habitat and ecological functions for both people and for plant and animal species.

Forterra has been involved in mitigation banking for several years. It supports good conservation practices while providing flexibility to the business community in meeting their regulatory requirements.
 

In-Lieu Fee

In-Lieu Fee mitigation is an emerging program in Washington where a developer would pay an offset fee into a fund instead of completing their own mitigation project.  The pooled fees would then be used by the program administrator to purchase and restore sites to offset the impacts from the project.

This program is different from traditional mitigation and mitigation banking in that the mitigation happens after the impacts have occurred.  Similar to mitigation banking, the regulatory responsibility is passed along to the program administrator.  In general, pre-impact mitigation is preferable, however large scale restoration projects can be very expensive, and many organizations lack the up-front funding for large-scale restoration. Because the process pools fees, it allows conservation organizations to restore more high-value natural areas and can be more efficient for developers resulting in a win-win situation for both developers and the environment.