By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
Staff Writer
Brandon Twp. — Southeast Michigan’s first ever wetlands mitigation bank has just opened in Brandon Township, and it will help speed up road projects for years to come.
On Oct. 9, the County Road Association and Michigan Wetland Board dedicated the first county wetlands site off Oakwood Road and Legault Boulevard on the townships east side.
“One of the things that we’ve talked about for a long time was that local road agencies don’t have a way to mitigate these wetland impacts,” said Denise Donohue, CEO of the County Road Association. “MDOT has multiple wetland sites like this to mitigate their big projects, but in the private sector, when you’re buying from some of these companies, especially in southeast Michigan, it’s $130,000 an acre.”
When road projects are underway, any wetlands affected must be replaced with wetlands elsewhere according to state law and regulations by the department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).
“Of course a wetland is any land that holds water part of the year, all of the year, and for any road project you always have to consult EGLE to see if you’re causing a problem and they would determine if it’s a wetland, and they decide it, you have to mitigate it,” said Donohue. “83 road commissions don’t have wetland staff on board, and not everybody is going to have their own wetlands.”
For projects that impact less than one-third of an acre, it can be mitigated by wetlands anywhere in the state. Projects larger than that have to be mitigated by wetlands in the same watershed. The wetland mitigation project by the Michigan Wetland Board has been around since 2016, and has mitigated over 130 projects in the state, funded by the Michigan Transportation Fund.
“The very first project mitigated was with the Washtenaw County Road Commission, and it was mitigated by a site in Copper Harbor, in the Keweenaw peninsula,” said Donohue. “That was the first open opened, and it was less than one-third acre.”
Because these areas have already been paid for, the wetland credits are able to be used by road commissions in the same water shed, meaning they don’t have to purchase wetlands from a private company or land owner.
“The benefit is that the road project keeps moving,” said Donohue. “It’s ‘free’ to the road commission because the state has already paid for it and set it aside. So certainly the tax-payer paid for it, but all the money for the road project can now go to the road and doesn’t have to go to buying some of this land somewhere.”
The preservation of these lands also benefits the ecology of the state as the lands are protected and preserved.
“It’s a win for the tax-payer, win for the public, win for the road agency, and win for the environment,” said Donohue.
Currently, the Road Commission for Oakland County has wetlands, but with road projects continuing, the credits for mitigation are running out quickly.
“You’ve got a lot of lakes and swampy land in this part of the state,” she said. “This is going to serve 13 counties. So all the way over to Calhoun is part of this water shed, and as far north and St. Clair, that’s the drainage basin.”
Though it is able to be used by several road agencies, the RCOC is looking forward to having mitigation credits for their road projects in the next several years.
“Whenever we get in a situation where we need to widen the roads and we start to impact wetlands near roads, we need to compensate for that,” said Gary Piotrowicz, deputy managing director for RCOC. “And in Oakland County, which is highly urbanized in many components, it can be difficult to find proper wetlands and similar watersheds.”
With this being a lower-cost option, more funds are able to go directly to road improvement projects.
“This gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility in watersheds when we’re doing our projects to really do the right things and replace the damage that we’ve done, but this really makes it essentially easy for us,” he said. “Also at a much more reasonable cost. This is much lower cost than having to do it privately.”