West Virginia In Lieu Fee Stream and Wetland Mitigation Program

The state's in-lieu fee mechanism for compensatory mitigation, which pools permit fees into restoration projects and is a funding channel watershed groups can compete for.

When a permitted project causes unavoidable impact to waters of the United States, the permittee owes compensatory mitigation. West Virginia's In Lieu Fee program is one of the tools for satisfying that obligation: instead of building its own mitigation site, the permittee pays a fee into the program, and the program consolidates those payments into larger, better-sited stream and wetland restoration projects. That matters to watershed organizations for two reasons. First, it is a standing, permit-driven source of restoration money that does not depend on annual appropriations, and program sponsors solicit project sites and implementation partners. Second, a group with a shovel-ready restoration reach in a watershed where mitigation demand exists is exactly what the program needs, which makes it worth putting local projects in front of the program administrator. The program operates under an instrument approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and WVDEP, and its service areas and credit accounting are defined in that instrument.