August 12, 2013
Ecosystem Investment Partners (EIP) is pleased to announce its acquisition today of 9,798 acres in Logan and McDowell Counties, West Virginia. EIP will restore, reconnect and protect over 178,000 linear feet (33 miles) of the properties’ streams and riparian areas to establish the Southern West Virginia Stream Mitigation Bank.
The properties EIP purchased are located in the Tug Fork and Guyandotte River watersheds, approximately 40 miles south of Charleston, West Virginia. These properties are ideally suited for the cost-effective restoration of perennial, intermittent and ephemeral stream channels in order to generate significant ecological uplift, and thus significant mitigation credit under the state’s Stream Valuation Metric scoring. Finding long reaches of restorable streams is a challenge in southern West Virginia due to the topography and nature of historic impacts in need of restoration. EIP will restore important ecological functions to degraded stream features including: former strip mine benches that cut off stream channels from their headwaters; mine access roads built in the stream or its floodplain; failing or “hanging” pipe culverts; and severe erosion and down-cutting. The properties EIP acquired contain multiple, entire drainages exhibiting an array of features in need of restoration that, when addressed comprehensively, will yield significant benefits to the watersheds and aquatic resources of West Virginia.
The Southern West Virginia Stream Mitigation Bank will deliver high quality stream mitigation credits to offset unavoidable stream impacts permitted under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act in West Virginia’s Tug Fork, Lower Guyandotte, Upper Guyandotte and Twelvepole watersheds. In the coming months, EIP and its local stream restoration experts at Canaan Valley Institute will be working closely with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Huntington District, the State of West Virginia, US EPA, US Fish & Wildlife Service and other agencies to design and entitle the properties as a stream mitigation bank. Once established and constructed, EIP anticipates that the bank will generate a large credit supply that will be able to service major projects with significant stream impacts. Purchasing credits to satisfy federal, state and local environmental permit requirements results in quicker time-to-permit, substantial cost savings, and a full transfer of otherwise perpetual mitigation liability. Credits may be reserved now.
To inquire about reserving credits, please contact Kevin Roush, Assistant Director of Business Development, at kevin@ecosystempartners.com.