Back in February 2020, Bruce had the pleasure of going on a wetland delineation in Sanford, Florida with Bill Griffy of Ecological Consulting Solutions, Inc. The landowner was uncertain what he was able to do or not do with the property for development purposes. An environmental consultant, like Bill Griffy, can do a wetland delineation for your project to see where the wetland lines lay and also determine the quality of the wetland depending on the Location & Landscape, Water Environment, & Community Structure.
The vegetation, soil, and hydrology all play a very important part in determining how much mitigation will be needed if an adverse wetland impact should development occur. If the mitigation plan is approved by the state and/or federal agencies, a landowner can utilize their land to the highest and best use by being able to mitigate for their wetland loss and replacing the wetland gain in another location such as a mitigation bank.
A mitigation bank must be located within the same geographic drainage basin/Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC) as the adverse wetland location. Once you determine which mitigation banks can service your property’s location, you can determine the pricing of the credits which range from $40,000.00-$350,000.00/credit. Depending on the quality of the wetland impact, will determine how many credits will need to be purchased. For example, if this landowner (in the video below) would like to impact the wetland and/or ponds on this property, the landowner would need to purchase approx. 0.4 UMAM credits for an acre of wetland impact.
