Wetlands JD interpretation help requested

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Does this mean that 38% of every acre of the property is "wet" and must be mitigated?

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Does this mean that 38% of every acre of the property is "wet" and must be mitigated?

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Its been 20 years since I've done wetlands work so things could have changed so Take this with a grain of salt; but, only the acres impacted need to be mitigated. If left undisturbed, then no mitigation needed. What you really need us the survey associated with the determination.

I will have to find it. It was done in 2016.

JD's are good only for 5 years. You will need a new one.

Not that I recall the term mosaic was mentioned. Somehow I remember the description of "pimple mounds."

It needs an update because it is 8 years old. But if that determination holds you can build on the 23 non-wet acres. If you develop any of the other/wet acres, don't do it, unless you want to pay for mitigation.

So as others have said, it would need a new determination. The Corps may just renew the old one (I've seen that done before).

But as far as the 38% goes--thats a mosaic. Pimple mounds are just a version of a wetland/non-wetland mosaic most often associated with the prairies and pine savannahs of SWLA. So for every acre of land, 0.38 acres is considered wetland. So if you impact 10 acres of that area, 3.8 acres would be considered wetland that has to be mitigated.

Impacts in that area are basically unavoidable because of the way it was mapped.

ETA: be prepared for the Corps to tell you that you need to talk to USDA about an NRCS determination if that land has any history of agricultural use--regardless of the fact that you had a previous determination from them.

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Anything over you have to contract a third party to do and it is around 10k.

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Holy shite, either prices have gone up in recent years, or they robbed you.

When I was in the private sector, our determinations for smaller projects (25 acres and less) were routinely half that. But that's been about 8 years ago now.

And Corps determinations only last 5 years. That's pretty much how it's always been.

And mitigation is almost always "in-kind", and the market dictates the cost generally. The BR area was always the cheapest because there's an overabundance of bottomland hardwood mitigation.

Prairie, Marsh, and Pine Savannah were usually the highest priced in my time because there were fewer banks in the areas where mitigation was needed. Prairie banks have exploded in SWLA in the last decade. Before that, there was only 1 or 2 banks, and one of them was one of the oldest banks in LA and still had over half it's credits available. But that's because the Corps was requiring BLH mitigation when someone wanted to bulldoze tallow thickets on historic Prairie ground.

They should have shopped around alittle more...

Plenty of good information in this thread. Development civil engineer, so we deal with wetland consultants on almost every development.

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Holy shite, either prices have gone up in recent years, or they robbed you.

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$10k is probably a little high for just the delineation by itself. Our guys are paying $6-8k depending on project size. The 404 permit process if you have to mitigate is anywhere from $16-20k, again depending on size and complexity.

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The BR area was always the cheapest because there's an overabundance of bottomland hardwood mitigation.

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For a while, there was a shortage of these credits about 6-8 years ago. A couple banks have since brought more credits on line, but a lot of them were pre-purchased by developers for future projects due to fear of credits getting scarce. Mitigation costs are running $60-80k per acre mitigated depending on quality.

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If a developer is involved they’ll do what’s necessary to determine what they can build on.

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Definitely since it goes to their bottom line. Good for the seller to know what that cost is also so they aren't getting low balled by the developer or conversely think their property is worth more than it is considering the cost to cure.

Also relevant to note that jurisdiction may be different since the Supreme Court ruling last year.