Measuring the Success of Wetlands Mitigation

The Council on Environmental Quality defines mitigation (40 C.F.R §1508.20) as actions that avoid, minimize, reduce, rectify, or compensative for the adverse impacts of development. Mitigation in which the impacts are avoided or minimized are rarely evaluated and, indeed, may be difficult to do so since this type of mitigation usually occurs during the project planning phase and would not be documented in the Clean Water Act §404 permitting process. The determination of the effectiveness of mitigation is usually initiated from the information contained in permits, even though permit conditions may not always adequately reflect the recommendations of the resource management agencies.