Frequently Asked Questions

What is mitigation banking?

Mitigation banking is a large-scale ecological effort that involves the restoration, enhancement, and preservation of natural resources, including streams, wetlands, and habitat conservation areas, for the purpose of providing compensation necessary to offset unavoidable impacts to resources permitted under federal, state, or local regulations. The value of mitigation banks involves a system of credits and debits that ensures ecological loss is compensated appropriately based on the resource type to be impacted. Overall, mitigation banks provide advantage over other forms of mitigation due to their large-scale contiguous conservation techniques that eliminate uncertainty by allowing credits to be awarded as success is achieved in order to support no net loss to the environment.
Why is mitigation important to Tennessee's aquatic resources?

Tennessee consists of numerous exceptional waters, including both streams and wetlands, and is home to one of the southeast’s most diverse aquatic resources, the Duck River. The growing population in TN will require need new and improved infrastructure that will support opportunities for future development. With this comes impacts to some of the states’ most valuable aquatic resources and the appropriate restoration and preservation of other degraded aquatic resources is important in order to offset these unavoidable impacts resulting from future development activities.
Who needs mitigation and why?

Anyone who plans to impact or degrade jurisdictional waters of the US and/or waters of the state through some form of development activity that accumulates debits and requires permitting under Section 401 and/or Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (i.e. through fill, encapsulation, removal of aquatic resource values, etc.).
How does private investment enable restoration in Tennessee?

Private investment through development of mitigation banks supports funding and construction of restoration projects prior to impacts occurring within a watershed, and helps to avoid temporal loss to our aquatic resources. Private investment provides financial resources that are necessary to ensure regulatory and technical goals and objectives are met for each restoration project.
How can I join TERA?

For membership inquiries or questions, please reach out to Alec Sheaff or TJ Mascia: asheaff@res.us 615.840.9200 tj.mascia@davey.com 252.723.0815