The City of Bellingham may soon open its first wetland mitigation bank, a project that’s nearly 10 years in the making.
A mitigation bank is a heavily regulated piece of ecologically valuable land where developers can buy “credits” if their projects impact wetlands, streams or riparian areas. In Whatcom County, the Lummi Nation led the way by developing the first tribally-owned bank in the country. The Lummi Bank has been in operation since 2012 and has sold nearly $2 million in credits as of this spring, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Skagit County has two banks: the Nookachamps and the Skagit.
Bellingham has been working with an interagency team to establish its bank since 2016. In July, the Whatcom County Council approved a major project permit for the city and voted to grant the city $1 million in economic development investment funding, enabling another step toward the eventual establishment of the bank.
Usually, any public or private developer that has a project with unavoidable wetland or waterway impacts is responsible for doing mitigation activities, which can be costly and inefficient.
“The system works but because the sites are defined by each individual developer, there’s no cohesion with where sites go. They’re known to have higher rates of failure because sometimes they’re put in places that aren’t the best ecological fit,” Renee LaCroix, Bellingham assistant public works director, told the county council during a project presentation.
In zones where the city is trying to funnel higher-density development, those small-scale mitigation activities can take up space that might be used for housing. A bank can be more effective than many small wetland mitigation sites because the consolidation of mitigation into a larger area encourages better wetland functions and more diverse natural habitat, according to the Washington Department of Ecology.
It does not, however, mean that wetlands are fair game. Development regulations and permit requirements remain the same and bank credits are a last resort after all efforts to avoid impacts to wetlands and riparian areas have been made.
Plus, Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund wrote in a letter to the county council, a bank can promote economic development by helping developers meet their regulatory mitigation requirements more easily. Credits will be for sale to all developers, public and private, within the bank’s service area, which includes nine watersheds from Chuckanut Bay in the south to Tenmile Creek in the north. The area is projected to receive the largest amount of future development, LaCroix explained.
The location of the first bank site is a group of four parcels totaling almost 100 acres east of Interstate 5, along Northwest Drive and just outside the northern Bellingham city limits. The Bear Creek Corridor Mitigation site is part of the Silver Creek watershed. The second site is approximately 158 acres at the McCormick Creek headwaters, in the Squalicum Creek watershed.
“Kudos to the City of Bellingham for looking forward and starting years ago,” county council member Mark Stremler said about the bank before voting to approve the permit. “I think it’s time the county caught up, maybe.”
The bank does not yet have an anticipated opening date, but Bellingham Habitat and Restoration Manager Analiese Burns said the goal is to have credits available for sale by 2025.
County Executive Satpal Sidhu confirmed that the county is beginning to have conversations with the Port of Bellingham and Whatcom Land Trust as well as the city about the possibility of establishing a county mitigation bank, a process that will take between seven to 10 years. Whatcom County Planning and Development Services is also working on the development of an off-site critical area buffer program, which is less complex than a bank.
Bellingham is now preparing its mitigation banking instrument, an elaborately detailed document that lays out the physical characteristics, legal obligations, monitoring, operational procedures and maintenance requirements for the bank. Once that is ready, the city council will need to pass a mitigation bank enabling ordinance, and decide how to price and assign credits.
“It’s exciting to be at this point where there can actually be some council involvement in this very lengthy process,” Burns said during an update to the city council on Sept. 16. “We’re at year eight and chomping at the bit to have you be able to review and have influence on your part, in the enabling ordinance.”
Julia Tellman writes about civic issues and anything else that happens to cross her desk; contact her at juliatellman@cascadiadaily.com.
