Laserfiche WebLink
1, �A4i5. 7A r <br />1 TA�I'Oi'KTY <br />,oacobs. <br />Washington State Department of Ecology are not accepting new applications for ILF <br />programs. <br />Onsite or Offsite Mitigation creates or enhances wetlands at the site of the impact or <br />nearby to compensate for wetland loss. Onsite mitigation is not feasible at the Airport <br />due to FAA regulations and wildlife hazard issues. Offsite mitigation is often <br />challenging to find sites that offer suitable opportunities to replace the lost functions of <br />the impacted wetlands. Neither onsite or offsite mitigation offer any benefit to <br />temporal loss of functions, as both types of mitigation are most often concurrent with — <br />or occur years after — the impact. This approach does not provide the ecological <br />benefits or can provide the wame return on investment that is possible from a <br />comprehensive mitigation approach. <br />Advance Mitigation is permittee -responsible mitigation that, like a mitigation bank, <br />offers the benefits of providing mitigation in advance of or concurrent with known <br />impacts as well as the opportunity to compensate for future expected impacts. Kittitas <br />County owns floodplain property suitable for watershed -based, large-scale advance <br />mitigation efforts, and is pursuing this option as described below. <br />Goals and Approach to ELN Advance Mitigation <br />The overall goal for Kittitas County is to provide immediate compensatory mitigation in <br />support of programmed FAA CIP projects as well as generating advance credits for future <br />planned projects. In order to achieve these goals, Kittitas County requires a potential <br />mitigation site that is located within the same sub -basin as the impact; provides adequate <br />credit generation potential, provides functional uplift potential across a broad range of <br />wetland and habitat types; is self-sustaining, and; can be protected in perpetuity. Kittitas <br />County has the unique opportunity as Landowner to conduct permittee -responsible advance <br />mitigation on fee -title owned sites, eliminating one of the key hurdles to mitigation site <br />development— property ownership. <br />Advance mitigation as a compensatory mitigation strategy fulfills several of the objectives of <br />the mitigation rule (33 CFR 332.3(a)) including reducing temporal Losses of functions and <br />reducing the uncertainty over mitigation project success. Regarding temporal Loss of <br />functions, Federal mitigation regulations state higher compensation ratios may be required to <br />compensate for temporal Loss and 33 CFR 332.3(m) describes a strong preference for <br />advance compensatory mitigation, by requiring advance or concurrent mitigation to the <br />maximum extent practicable. By regulation, advance mitigation should be the preferred form <br />of permittee -responsible compensatory mitigation. <br />Kittitas County's approach to implementing advance mitigation is to develop a comprehensive <br />mitigation plan that increases the potential for several types of functional replacement, <br />including aquatic resource restoration, wetland establishment, enhancement, and wetland and <br />December 8, 2020 <br />