Environmental Services, INC.

For projects that incur unavoidable impacts to wetlands or streams, mitigation is often required by the regulatory agencies. Compensatory mitigation is the process of preserving, enhancing, restoring, or creating habitat to compensate for the impact associated with using land for development. As environmental awareness and the push for resource conservation have increased, successful compensatory mitigation techniques have been instrumental in the development of sites that contain wetlands, streams, rare habitat, protected species, or other environmentally sensitive areas.

ESI has staff that specializes in helping clients meet requirements for compensatory mitigation as required by state and federal permit conditions. Mitigation techniques can and do work. However, a successful mitigation project depends upon careful design and construction, selection of suitable plant material, proper installation, a detailed monitoring program, and timely maintenance. Each step in the process must be based upon good science and must be coordinated with regulatory agencies. ESI is experienced in providing total mitigation package development and support including: planning, design, construction oversight, planting, monitoring, and maintenance. ESI has designed and installed hundreds of acres of successfully established freshwater forested/herbaceous/aquatic habitat, as well as emergent and submerged marine environments.

Mitigation Banks

ESI has evaluated over 30 potential mitigation bank sites, and we have successfully obtained 11 federal Mitigation Banking Instruments in the southeastern United States. In Florida, we have worked on four mitigation bank permits where we acted as the prime consultant, including the first bank permitted under Florida’s mitigation banking rule. We have served in a similar role for mitigation banks in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Mississippi. Throughout the southeastern United States, ESI has provided mitigation banking expertise for numerous wetland and stream mitigation banks, including the first stream mitigation bank in Mississippi.

Our mitigation staff has the expertise and ability to perform the requested tasks of developing feasibility analysis for mitigation banks, and carrying through with associated Environmental Resource Permitting and federal Section 404 permitting, management and operation, and monitoring and maintenance of a mitigation bank. In addition, ESI has extensive experience in related tasks, such as wetland delineation, wetland classification, Unified Mitigation Assessment Method (UMAM), wildlife and forestry management, mitigation monitoring, and management of large mitigation areas.