11/11/2023 0 Comments Judy joyce earthview environmental![]() ![]() In most instances, the Corps asks developers to use mitigation banks if they can, he said. Hayes said the Corps has put greater emphasis on mitigation banks since new regulations went into place in 2008, and the change has resulted in more success. ![]() Maintenance and monitoring become the responsibility of the bank owner, who at the same time can create a large wetland and enjoy a smaller per-acre cost, she said. Joyce said a wetland mitigation bank such as the River Products's provides a developer with the ability to buy the credit needed to replace a wetland, likely at a lower cost, while freeing up the developer from having any need for long-term monitoring. That's if the developer chooses to do so on his or her own property once construction expenses and maintenance and monitoring requirements are factored in over a number of years. in Coralville, said creating a new, federally approved wetland can cost a developer perhaps $100,000 an acre. Judy Joyce, wetland scientist at EarthView Environmental Inc. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.Īs the new wetland gets established, the mitigation bank owner gradually sells a credit representing a piece of the new wetland to those whose developments are affecting existing wetlands or streams and who need to replace what they are disturbing. In the banking arrangement, River Products purchased land not previously a wetland and it is investing to create a new wetland under the rigorous oversight of an Interagency Review Team comprised of the Corps, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. ![]() It is just such a bank that Todd Scott at River Products has created along the Iowa River in Johnson County, on the east of edge of Hills. In years past, it was not uncommon for a developer, for example, to establish a small wetland to replace one that a development had disturbed - the result of which meant that many insubstantial new water features dotted the landscape, making it hard for federal regulators to monitor and regulate.ĭan Hayes, the Regulatory Branch program manager in Iowa for the Army Corps of Engineers's Rock Island District, said a federal Government Accounting Office report in 2004 concluded that the Corps was not tracking required wetland mitigation projects adequately and that many of the projects had failed.įrom that GAO report, Hayes said, came the federal rule that greatly expanded the creation of something called the wetland mitigation bank. You will begin to receive our Daily News updates. Add your contacts. Instead, it is an example of a joint public sector-private sector enterprise driven by stringent federal regulations that require the adequate replacement of wetlands, streams or other aquatic resources that are effected by new roads and highways or by private development. This wetland-creating venture, though, is not coming simply out of the kindness of River Products Co.'s heart. ![]() 'But we can also do things like this, and leave properties just as we found them or better than we found them for the future.' 'Yeah, in our industry, we impact the environment. 'Industry and the environment can exist and work together,' Scott said. of Iowa City, is in the process of transforming the 40 acres into a forested wetland and grassy wetland, which in 10 years the company will donate to the Johnson County Conservation Department or a not-for-profit nature conservancy, along with an escrow fund to help manage it in perpetuity. ![]()
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