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Draft Eastern Gateway Wetland Annual Report Introduction Background The West Eugene Wetlands Plan (hereafter WEWP) attempts to strike a balance between environmental protection and urban development. The plan employs a comprehensive approach in meeting state and federal wetland laws and policies. The plan accomplishes this in part by identifying the most valuable wetlands and protecting them through a series of protection measures. The Plan allows development of wetlands which are small, isolated, difficult to protect, already planned or developed for urban uses. Compensation in the form of wetland mitigation is required for all authorized impacts to wetlands caused by development in the West Eugene area and elsewhere in the City. The primary means for implementing the plan is to utilize the wetland mitigation bank concept. The mitigation bank concept outlined in the WEWP identifies the most suitable sites, acquires them and restores them in advance of wetland impact. The mitigation bank program provides an easier method of compensating for unavoidable impacts and can result in improvement on a landscape scale. The Eastern Gateway Wetland Restoration Site is the first local attempt to implement the wetland mitigation bank concept. The project sprang from a City proposal to conduct a wetland mitigation project for a runway extension at the Eugene Airport. In the course of developing the mitigation site plan for the Airport project, the City of Eugene Engineering Department proposed pooling the financial resources of several small wetland mitigation projects together at the Eastern Gateway site. Through a cooperative effort and collective vision the project was formalized by a Memorandum Of Agreement between the Division of State Lands, The BLM, and the City of Eugene (see Appendix _ for a copy of the MOA). The merits of "developing" the site using the mitigation bank concept include: • more efficiency in the management of funds. • a site wide design implemented in a consistent manner. • cost savings through efficiency of scale in construction.