For more than a decade now, the State of Montana has promulgated various forms of ad-hoc environmental mitigation efforts mostly non-compliant with the U.S. Army Corps’ 2008 Mitigation Rule. It’s latest iteration is an In-Lieu Fee (ILF) mitigation program named ‘MARS’.

Federal Public Notice first detailed a stream mitigation project and a wetland project NWO-2011-01760-MTH for the new Montana ILF.  The project proposals noticed were not in compliance with the 2008 Mitigation Rule and were inconsistent with the published state-wide Montana Stream Mitigation Procedure (SMP).

There was a long list of concerns expressed by government officials, environmental groups, and others over several months in response to the USACE public notices, but none dissuaded the powerful, state-connected group from their (wrong) track.

Environmental mitigation, in this case implemented under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, is required for those impacting the state’s wetlands and streams where such impacts cannot be avoided or otherwise reduced.

Low-quality or poorly conceived mitigation risks both the credibility of environmental mitigation generally and in this case, the future of the state’s precious public water resources. >Learn More via the National Environmental Banking Association