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ASRC proposing mitigation bank The regulatory mechanism could simplify North Slope permitting but would also place restrictions on activities in three regions Eric Lidji For Petroleum News
In advance of numerous megaprojects on the horizon for the North Slope, the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. is proposing a system for coordinating wetlands mitigation.
The Alaska Native corporation for northern Alaska is proposing an umbrella mitigation bank, a federally supported method for blunting the impact of development on wetlands.
When a proposed development would impact wetlands, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requires the developer to offset the impact by restoring nearby wetlands. But under federal rules, a third party can take responsibility for this mitigation by creating a “bank.” The third party earns credits for restoration work within a certain area and sells those credits to future developers proposing projects that would impact those wetlands.
With enough development, the third party can turn a profit by selling the credits it earns.
Developers have taken to the idea in other states because buying credits can speed up the permitting process while also transferring wetlands mitigation liability to a third party.
And while some environmental groups have questioned the effectiveness of mitigation efforts broadly, other groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, support mitigation banking as a cost effective way to address broad reaching restoration efforts.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for guiding the regulatory process.
ASRC recently submitted a prospectus outlining the idea. If the Army Corps accepts the proposal, ASRC would choose properties and propose specific banking instruments.
Three regions in play A mitigation bank involves two geographic regions.
The first is the site of the wetlands the third party agrees to restore, protect or improve to earn credits. The second is the service area where development activities can utilize the bank.
The ASRC service area would cover the entire North Slope Borough, meaning any development project inside that area would be eligible to by credits from the bank.
The site would be an “umbrella” covering as many as three blocks across the North Slope. The three properties are Upper Colville, Starfish Bluff and Cape Halkett.
The Upper Colville plot would cover some 11,413 acres in the Upper Colville River watershed, between the Awuna and Kurupa Rivers. The Starfish Bluff plot would cover some 10,787 acres, also in the Upper Colville River watershed, along the Colville River just downstream of the confluence with the Killik River. The Cape Halkett plot would cover some 4,600 acres along the coast on the northwestern edge of Harrison Bay.
ASRC described these three regions as “currently fully functional and in a pristine state.”
All three properties sit along the eastern border of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Upper Colville and Starfish Bluff properties sit among state, federal and Native oil and gas leases, putting them in the path of future development, ASRC noted.
In its prospectus, ASRC proposed a conservation easement at the properties, restricting activities to subsistence, some recreation and winter roads guaranteed not to harm the areas over the long term. It would prohibit all-season roads and permanent facilities.
ASRC wants to establish the bank in advance of more than a dozen potential mega-projects planned for the North Slope, the majority involving energy developments.
Those include developments at Greater Mooses Tooth, CD-5 and other Alpine satellites, Point Thomson and the Umiat region, as well as an Alaska natural gas pipeline, potential infrastructure for Beaufort and Chukchi seas development, the Roads to Resources Program, Arctic coal development and North Slope community infrastructure projects.
Growing in popularity The program has been around for decades.
In the early 1980s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helped launch the first banks, primarily to mitigate the impact of state and federal transportation projects on wetlands.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the agencies responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act — saw banking as a way to address shortcomings in “single-project” mitigation efforts and pushed to expand its use.
In 1995, the EPA and Army Corps, along with three other federal agencies, published a guidance document creating a framework for creating and using mitigations banks. The process gathered momentum over the following decade, but really took off in 2008 after the agencies listed mitigation banking as their preferred regulatory path for development.
Alaska is currently home to two mitigation banks, both small and in Southcentral.
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