Restoration Systems is proud to now service our local watershed with mitigation credits for impacts to streams, wetlands and water quality. Over the previous decade Raleigh, Durham and Cary comprise the fastest growing of the top fifty largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Over the next twenty years an additional 1.2 million people are projected to join us in the region. These new folks will create an enormous demand for environmental mitigation.
The Pancho Stream, Wetland & Nutrient Mitigation Bank (Pancho) and its neighboring bank, Cripple Creek, are part of the answer to balancing rapid expansion with the need to improve watersheds. Located in the sensitive transition between the piedmont and the coast, the project will restore over 8,000 feet of destroyed stream, 30 acres riparian wetland to improve water quality, and yield 22,000 pounds nutrient off-sets.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Before the bank, the 65 acre parcel consisted of agricultural land utilized for livestock grazing, row crop production, and forest. Approximately 9,830 linear feet of existing Kennedy Mill Branch and unnamed tributaries to Kennedy Mill Branch, as well as 35.9 acres of hydric soil and existing wetlands were pasture areas accessible to livestock and were routinely cleared and mowed for row-crop production, resulting in local disturbances to stream banks and wetland soil surfaces. Additional land use practices included the maintenance and removal of riparian vegetation; ditching of adjacent riparian wetlands; and relocation, dredging, and channelization of onsite streams which resulted in degraded water quality, unstable banks (stream entrenchment, erosion, and bank collapse).
