Zachary Umbrella Wetland Mitigation Bank

East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana

EcoGENESIS provides ongoing compliance and monitoring services for this Umbrella bottomland hardwood wetland mitigation bank located in East Baton Rouge, Parish Louisiana within the New Orleans District USACE.  Composed of four sites totaling roughly 500 acres—Copper Mill Bayou, Comite Flats I, Comite Flats II and Redwood Creek–ecoGENESIS provides high level consulting assistance and  technical staff that work in concert with EcoSystem Renewal staff to perform post-restoration monitoring and wetland delineation services verifying establishment of bottomland hardwood wetlands meeting USACE wetland technical criteria and MBI success criteria.  All of the sites were originally designed and permitted by the Principal Scientist, Pamela Fetterman, while in the employ of another consulting firm.  Most recently, ecoGENESIS staff is assisted with the final floristic survey of the Copper Mill Bayou site, and Year 8 monitoring and reporting for the Redwood Creek site.

During the Year 5 monitoring event of Redwood Creek, our technical  expertise in hydric soils was brought to bear to confirm the presence of hydric soils within areas previously mapped as upland soils that were identified by EcoGENESIS Principal Pamela Fetterman and project manager in the permitting stages as not indicative of actual site conditions.  As a result, she was able to negotiate a special condition in the MBI Addenda for the site allowing for addition of these areas if wetland criteria developed.   Soils and monitoring data post-restoration demonstrated development of hydric soil indicators and development of wetland within these areas, resulting in the release of additional credits.  EcoGENESIS’ is providing delineation and monitoring report quality assurance review, and guidance and assistance to the client’s technical staff in conducting the delineations and securing credit releases in conjunction with submittal of monitoring reports. EcoGENESIS ensures the client’s data is accurately and efficiently reported, resulting in faster processing of credit releases due to the quality of reports submitted thereby precluding entire inter-agency review team (IRT) field review of the projects in order to process most credit release requests to date.