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• ' 1 v oaT zxecution. and soutccti. aeCame our secondary data. 'te'a ;ttandardizecl •all be'liilkcJ, to design flaws, ba~• p annin,.. p " lncl; of monitoring and maintenan::a after initial construe- costs in 1993 doll:rt~; classified and aggregated projects on tion. In fart, both in Floridz and in [ha mld-Atl:lntlc re`;ion. the ba.~is of location, sits charactzristics, ~tetlan type, anti '~~~ny mitigation proJects~l~'tre nertr even undertaken and, project objectives; and used the results to develop prelitlli- ' ;cords of projects that «'ert undertaken reveal a wide- ,nary cost-per-acct esatttates for each of nine project catego- ' dd Lack of commicmen[ tohigh-duality results. ties- Xn general, the dismal record of mtugatiotl failures in the Tlu secondary data is made up of cost records for individ- Y,I'.S. points not to a failure of restoration science, but to ual wetland creation, rtstoratlvn. and enhAnerment projects ••pearecse incentives" In tvttland5 restoration markets. The from published and unpublished reports, the general trade term perverse incentive is 'used in economics to refer to literature, and county. State, and federal databases. The see- situations where decision ntakecs are rewarded for exhibit- ~ ondary database includes e:camples of wetland creation. ine undesirable behavior. or penalized-for cxhibi[inb desir- restoration, and enhancement, as well. ns const[uction of able behavior. The term applies in this rase because., with wttl:lnd5 for waterquality irimprovemen[, waterfowl habitat, fe~v exceptions, [hose who design and implement wetland and For other purposes. Approximately half of all recocdc art restorative proJecrs tarn their livelihoods satisfying t(te de- For restoration or creation of wetlands on agricultural lands mantis of permit seekers involved In the §404 program. not related to mitigation. Over 95 percent of the temainin~ $ecausn these permit seekers demand [ow-cost permits this half of the database are mitigation projects. 'Three-quarters [market is understandably driven by incentives for low-cost of them were mitigation of mad or highway impacts co. mitigation not the production of high-quality wetlands. wetlands. While we believe this to be [ha largest and most The wetland trtitigation market itself, however, is not to comprehensive wetland restoration cost database in the blame for the failure of mitigation. Like most markets, it has world, it suffers from many of the limitations discussed performed effecavely~ac providing exactly what was in de- above and,, as a result, provides only a starting point for mand-low cosCmitiaation.Btiyers (pztmit seekers) and sell- understanding the economics of wetland restoration. ~trs (tztiagatiou suppliers) ha~'a had no ~e~l reason to be quality Primary cost data was gathered to makeup fa[ the short- conseious because tegnlators, Fshe~only potential •soucce of • comings of the. available seeondjuy data and to provide a quality control, have ;eneraUy not linked permit. acquisition more accurate picture. of the costs of high-quality restora- with mitigation suec~ss. In the absenct of attentive regulators, tiotl, We developed ccsc estimates for a group of 90 wetland . competitive forces in the nitigadott market were perverse and, mitigation projecu on the basis of detailed engineering and to a large ezten~ caused the historical record of mitigation cost accounting profiles of ea,eh project Project profiles failure.'Ihis Qroblem was exacerbated by institutional failures wcrebased onwell-designed. carefitlly txecuted restoration such as itlfrequent and inadzquate enforcement actions and and ereacioti projects. Costs per task and overall costs were - °fectivt eaforcementtools to ensure that permitces fulFillcd developed by estimating the labor, equipment, and materials . . ; miidgation comm[tmen[s. As a resultzthe• record of miti- required to complete each esset}tia[ task and applying appro- . f~ ,,.dom costs reflects the price of providing low-quality'miuga= • pna[e ~+~+ages, rents. and .other input prices_ Hypothetical tioa. Such a record should not be used by regulators oc permit vanations in Site and project characteristics, were ustd In seekers as the b85is for developlag expectations about future so[ne eases to csdma[e how engineering requirements and restoration rnsts_ project costs would change under differing site conditions. .All of tilt projects included in the primary database were Researcf~ Outline ~ based on projects carried out in a tnirigation context; none In atl effoR to develop wort r liable cost data, we collected were simple agricultural conversions. wetland cestocatioa cost data for atppro.cimately 1,000 separate Results -Baseline Cost Estimates prvjccts in 1993. We then conducted drooled cost analysis for 90 of those projects which bacame our primary data. The other Figure 1 displays estimates of average wetland restorntion 900 projects, for which co5c tiara were obtained. from ocher costs (cxeludiag land costs) derived from our primary data Averagn.Cost Per Acce ~aiEGlkdr~ ~StS~ Pleura 1 srra saaa sso.o Sss_T sas.7 a s4zo °~c s4o.o ~ 9 . e 519.5 510.1 518.0 G . 51.0 u E ~ @ ~ a ~ ~q r v C ~ R' o ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ' WetlanG Type • 4 NATIONAL WETL~I~C5 NEWSt.E17ER