Estuarine Habitat Mitigation in Oregon: Policy Review, Analysis, and Recommended Improvements

The report is organized in the following manner. After the introductory chapter (Chapter 1), Chapter Two describes Oregon's current estuarine policy and related state and federal policies. Chapter Three provides an inventory of recent permitted impacts and associated estuarine resource replacement. Chapter Four consists of a brief summary of the status of estuarine ecology and restoration/mitigation, with knowledge gaps identified. Chapter Five discusses wetland functional assessment tools and options for compensatory mitigation. This chapter begins with a description of the tidal Hydrogeomorphic (HGM) assessment method, how it compares to the estuarine resource replacement rules' relative values table, and the utility of the tidal HGM in estuarine mitigation. Chapter Five, then, explores alternative mitigation options such as out-of-kind, banking, payment-in-lieu, and conservation in lieu. Chapter Six introduces the concept of incorporating compensatory mitigation into a watershed approach. Based upon the information gathered from the ecological and restoration/mitigation literature and the permit inventory, Chapter Seven outlines recommendations to change the statute, the rules, the standard operating procedures, and other aspects of Oregon’s estuarine resource replacement program.