What is Mitigation Banking?

According to the federal government, Mitigation Banking is defined as:

"wetland restoration, creation, enhancement, and, in exceptional circumstances, preservation undertaken expressly for the purpose of compensating for unavoidable wetland losses in advance of development actions, when such compensation cannot be achieved at the development site or would not be as environmentally beneficial."

How Does Wetland Mitigation Banking Work?

Under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, any landowner who encounters jurisdictional wetlands on a development site must try to avoid filling in (i.e., impacting) the wetlands. If avoidance is not possible, the impact must be minimized. If the impact is unavoidable and non-trivial, that landowner must then "mitigate" the impact by replacing the impacted wetland with a similar type of wetland. Such mitigation must be accomplished either on the impact site or off-site, ideally within the same watershed or ecosystem.

The process of identifying a site for wetland mitigation, designing the new wetlands and obtaining governmental approval can delay a development project for many months and costs tens of thousands of dollars. Wetland mitigation banking circumvents most of this process by allowing a developer to mitigate for unavoidable impacts by purchasing wetland acres from a Wetland Mitigation Bank. A Wetland Mitigation Bank is a site that has already been turned into wetlands and received all requisite governmental certifications. Once a Wetland Mitigation Bank has obtained its approvals, it is granted a certain number of wetland acres which it can sell to other persons whose projects are within the Service Area of the particular Wetland Mitigation Bank. Buyers may use these wetland acres to meet their mitigation obligations. Before the wetland acres are sold, the land under them is legally restricted from ever being developed, protecting these wetlands for future generations.

KCWMB provides pre-approved mitigation for non-forested (herbaceous) wetland impacts that requires no further agency approval. KCWMB can also be used as mitigation for low-quality forested wetland impacts subject to agency approval. No further wetland studies are required by the applicant.

Buying wetland acres from Wetland Mitigation Banks eliminates the costs associated with designing, building, and maintaining a project-specific mitigation site, which can shorten the permitting process by months or even years. KCWMB is an approved Commercial Wetlands Mitigation Bank that encompasses the watershed associated with Cypress Creek, the Brazos River, the Trinity River and Buffalo Bayou. KCWMB is privately owned and receives no public funding for its activities.