An old cattle pasture in the Vancouver Lake lowlands will become an ecologically rich wetland — and, not coincidentally, a lucrative source of income for the private company transforming the 154-acre property at the Port of Vancouver.
State environmental regulators on Monday certified the wetland mitigation bank proposed by Habitat Bank Inc. of Woodinville.
The land once was farmed by the late Elmer Rufener.
Habitat Bank, doing business locally as Clark County Mitigation Partners, expects to plow about $1 million into the task of excavating ponds, planting native vegetation and securing various legal and financial assurances. The bank will have 54 credits to sell to developers draining or filling wetlands elsewhere.
“There’s a lot of upfront costs,” said Victor Woodward, a partner in Habitat Bank.
There’s a big upside, too.
By the time the bank sells its last credit after 10 years, it expects to generate something on the order of $8.7 million.
Woodward said the company expects to charge $190,000 per credit, although it has already agreed to sell as many as 10.8 credits to the Port of Vancouver at a discounted price of $50,000 per credit. The port figures it will need to offset wetland damage from extending a rail line and filling a 3-acre industrial site.
In fact, Woodward said he expects government agencies will be the bank’s biggest customers in a wobbly economy.
“The reality is, most of the users of these (wetland mitigation banks) are public infrastructure projects — roads, sewers, schools, bridges and port projects,” Woodward said. “Those things are impacted by the economy, but not so much as commercial private development.”
State officials have in recent years emphasized the benefits of wetland mitigation banking as a better alternative than a hodgepodge of scattered projects.
As often as not, those on-site mitigation projects amount to weed-covered ditches ringed with cyclone fences. They’ve generally proven to be ineffective in offsetting the loss of natural wetlands that filter pollutants, corral flood waters and provide valuable wildlife habitat.
Instead, state officials believe large wetland mitigation banks offer a better alternative.
The wetland mitigation bank works basically like this: The “banker” spends money upfront to create, enhance or restore a wetland in a given area. Next, state and federal environmental regulators certify the bank and establish a service area. Developers who drain or fill low-grade wetlands within that service area may offset the damage by buying “credit” from the bank.
The bank is then monitored and maintained forever through conservation easements stamped to the property records.
“You may be losing wetland functions in one area, but you’re replacing them with valuable wetlands in another,” said Curt Hart, a spokesman for the state Department of Ecology. “What we’re trying to look at here is, no net loss of wetland functions.”
The new Columbia River Wetland Mitigation Bank is the first approved under new state rules that took effect in September.
Its service area ranges along the Washington side of the Columbia River, from Bonneville Dam to Longview. The bank, which has already been certified by the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Ecology, is expected to be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency later this week.
Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551 or erik.robinson@columbian.com.
