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Land Use Planning and Social Equity in North Carolina’s Compensatory Wetland and Stream Mitigation Programs

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Abstract

The U.S. Clean Water Act requires compensatory mitigation for wetland and stream damage through restoration of damaged aquatic ecosystems. We evaluate the North Carolina’s Ecosystem Enhancement Program (EEP), a state agency responsible for compensatory mitigation. We compare communities gaining and losing aquatic resources during mitigation, finding new types of socioeconomic disparities that contradict previous studies of mitigation program behavior. We find average distances between impact and mitigation sites for streams (43.53 km) and wetlands (50.3 km) to be larger in North Carolina than in off-site mitigation programs in other regions previously studied. We also find that aquatic resources in the State are lost from urbanized areas that are more affluent, white, and highly educated, and mitigated at sites in rural areas that are less affluent, less well educated, and have a higher percentage of minorities. We also analyze the relationship between urban growth indicators and EEP accumulation of compensation sites. Growth indicators and long-term population projections are uncorrelated with both projected transportation impacts and advance mitigation acquired by the EEP, suggesting that growth considerations can be more effectively incorporated into the EEP’s planning process. We explore the possibility that spatial mismatches could develop between watersheds that are rapidly growing and those that are gaining mitigation. We make recommendations for ways that regulators incorporate growth indicators into the mitigation planning process.

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Notes

  1. The United States Geological Survey’s classification system assigns a nested, multiple-digit code to every watershed based on its size and location (Seaber and others 1994). There are 54 8-digit watersheds (sub-basins) in North Carolina that contain over 1600 14-digit watersheds (small, local watersheds).

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jennifer Doty and Catherine Zimmer with their assistance in this analysis. Funding for this project came in part from the UNC Institute for the Environment.

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  1. Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB #3140 New East Building, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-3250, USA

    Todd BenDor & Audrey Stewart

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  1. Todd BenDor
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Correspondence to Todd BenDor.

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BenDor, T., Stewart, A. Land Use Planning and Social Equity in North Carolina’s Compensatory Wetland and Stream Mitigation Programs. Environmental Management 47, 239–253 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-010-9594-z

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