MAKING SENSE OF WETLAND
RESTORATION COSTS
by
Dennis M. King and Curtis C. Bohlen
University of Maryland
Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies
P.O. Box 38, Solomons, Maryland 20688
January 1994
Research funded under:
Environmental Protection Agency Cooperative Agreement No. CR-818227-CI
and
Department of Energy Contract No. DE-AC22-92MT92006
with
University of Maryland, Center far Environmental and Estuarine Studies
-------
I. INTRODUCTION
The Problem
Misunderstandings about the cost of
wetland restoration projects are
widespread and are having an adverse
impact on U.S. wetland policy.1
Determining the most effective regula-
tory strategies for controlling the devel-
opment of wetlands and the best allo-
cation of public funds to restore wet-
lands and watersheds both require a
basic understanding of wetland restora-
tion costs. Making informed private and
public investment decisions about pro-
jects that may require wetland mitiga-
tion also calls for reliable wetland
restoration cost data. Unfortunately, the
most widely available data on costs of
wetland restoration tend to understate
the cost of designing and implementing
restoration projects that have a reason-
able chance of success. This paper ex-
plains why misperceptions about
restoration costs persist, and provides
baseline point and range estimates of
restoration costs for various types of
wetlands.
The Source of the Problem
It is no more useful to focus on the aver-
age cost of restoring an acre of wetland
than to focus on the average cost of
restoring a damaged automobile. As a
practical matter, costs depend on what
is being restored; how badly it is
damaged; and how fast, how perfect,
1. We refer in this paper to wetland restoration.
The analysis on which the paper is based,
however, dealt with a mix of case studies that
included some wetland creation and wetland
enhancement projects. For a discussion of
technical differences, see Lewis, R. R. 1989.
Wetlands Restoration/Creation/Enhance-
ment Terminology: Suggestions for Standard-
ization, 1-7 In Wetland Creation and
Restoration: The Status of the Science., Volume
11: Perspectives (EPA/600/3-89/038), eds. J.
A. Kusler and M E. Kentula. Corvalis, OR.:
Environmental Protection Agency, Environ-
mental Research Laboratory.
and how permanent the repair needs to
be. The wetland restoration cost data
gathered for the research described here,
for example, ranged from $5 per acre to
$1.5 million per acre. Some cost
differences result because of the wide
range of restoration projects that are
undertaken, but site-specific differences
can result in significant cost differences
even for apparently similar projects.
As with automobiles, however, cost
estimating problems can be overcome by
grouping wetlands and wetland
restoration projects according to struc-
tural characteristics that affect restora-
tion cost, and by adjusting the baseline
cost estimates for each group using
simple indicators of site conditions (e.g.,
dry or wet, hilly or flat, urban or rural,
on-site or off-site disposal of spoil,
union or non-union labor).
Unfortunately, generally available
data on the cost and performance of
wetland restoration and creation efforts
do not result from analyses that can
easily account for these project-specific,
site-specific, and wetland-specific dif-
ferences. The available data come pre-
dominately from two sources which for
entirely different reasons are both mis-
leading in the sense that they understate
the cost of restoring wetlands.
The most reliable and widely
circulated sources of restoration cost
data are generated by federal agencies
involved in programs to restore
converted agricultural lands back to
wetlands.2 These projects usually
involve restoring altered hydrology (e.g.,
2. These programs were designed to encourage
the conversion of marginal agricultural land
to wetland. The USDA Water Bank Program
was implemented in 1972 and covers 509,000
acres. A similar Department of the Interior
Program, the Small Wetlands Acquisition
Program, covers 1.2 million acres. The 1990
Farm Bill established a Wetland Reserve
Program with the goal of restoring one million
acres of wetland by 1995. The Fish and
Wildlife Service also targets wetland creation
and restoration through the Private Lands
Program and Wildlife Extension Agreements.
-------
breaking drainage tiles or filling ditches)
which is inexpensive and usually
successful. However, these projects,
although important, are not representa-
tive of more difficult projects aimed at
restoring structurally and biologically
more complex wetlands outside the
farm belt. Nor do they reflect the prob-
lems associated with the restoration and
creation of wetlands in urban and sub-
urban landscapes where wetland losses
and the associated needs for mitigation
are the greatest.
A second potential source of
information about the costs of wetland
restoration is the nearly 20-year record
of wetland creation and restoration
projects undertaken as mitigation for
wetland impacts regulated under
Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.3
Relatively little has been reported about
the costs or effectiveness of these
mitigation projects, but what is
available reveals a persistent pattern of
low cost and poor success rates. This
record, however, reflects more about
institutional inadequacies and the
failure of mitigation policies than the
cost or difficulty of designing and
implementing high quality wetland
restoration projects. It is the result of
perverse incentives in the market for
restored and created wetlands that has
developed over the last two decades to
serve the mitigation needs of Section 404
permit seekers.4 This market has, almost
3. Under a 1990 agreement between EPA and the
Army Corps of Engineers, a process called
"sequencing" was established that requires
permit seekers to avoid wetland impacts if
there is an alternative, minimize impacts
where they are unavoidable, and mitigate for
residual wetland losses through
"compensatory actions such as the restoration
of existing wetlands or the creation of man-
made wetlands." Current regulations favor
on-site and in-kind wetland mitigation.
4. The term "perverse incentive" is used in
economics to refer to situations where
decision makers are rewarded for exhibiting
undesirable behavior, or penalized for
exhibiting desirable behavior. In the
mitigation market, mitigation suppliers earn
high profits by providing low quality
from the beginning, provided rewards
for low cost, not high quality
restoration. For purposes of our
analysis, this situation created a
problem. The cost data drawn from
records of mitigation projects have a
significant downward bias and tend not
to reflect the costs of completing high
quality or even medium quality
restoration projects.
Research Objectives
The research summarized here was de-
signed to overcome the problems with
generally available restoration cost data
and provide reliable estimates of the
costs of designing and implementing
wetland restoration projects with a rea-
sonable commitment to both cost and
performance.
The preliminary empirical results pre-
sented here include point estimates and
typical ranges of per-acre costs for nine
different categories of wetland restora-
tion projects.5 The categories were de-
veloped on the basis of wetland charac-
teristics that affect the tasks required to
achieve restoration success, not on the
basis of wetland functions and values.
In this sense they are categories of pro-
ject types, not categories of wetlands per
se. The cost estimates were developed to
restoration and low profits by providing high
quality restoration.
5 . The nine categories of wetland projects reflect
(1) whether or not the project is a (non-regula-
tory) agricultural conversion, and (2) the hy-
drology and vegetation structure of the wet-
land being restored. The project categories in-
clude (1) Aquatic Beds—tidal or nontidal
communities of permanently or nearly perma-
nently submerged plants; (2) Complex Projects
incorporating three or more wetland types in a
single project; (3) Freshwater mixed projects,
consisting of nontidal projects in which both
forested and emergent vegetation is produced;
(4) Freshwater, nontidalproiects establishing
forested wetlands; (5) Fresnwater, nontidal
projects establishing emergent wetlands; (6)
Projects producing tidal freshwater wetlands;
(7) Projects establishing saltmarshes and other
marine or estuarine wetlands dominated by
emergent vegetation, (8) Projects establishing
mangrove communities; ana (9) Agricultural
Conversions.
-------
provide an economic and statistical ba-
sis for improving wetland mitigation
policy and for assessing how wetland
restoration might contribute to the
achievement of wetland, floodplain, and
watershed goals.
II. THE RESEARCH APPROACH
During 1993 we collected wetland
restoration cost data for approximately
1,000 separate projects including 90
projects for which we conducted de-
tailed cost analysis (primary data) and
900 projects for which cost data were
obtained from other sources (secondary
data). We standardized all costs in
1993 dollars; classified and aggregated
projects on the basis of location, site
characteristics, wetland type, and pro-
ject objectives; and used the results to
develop preliminary cost-per-acre esti-
mates for each of our nine project cate-
gories.
Summary of Primary Data
We developed our primary cost data
using detailed engineering and cost ac-
counting profiles.6 These were devel-
oped in collaboration with leading wet-
land restoration experts from around
the U.S. and were based on the input
requirements (e.g., labor, equipment, ma-
terials) necessary to complete specific
tasks at various project stages (e.g., pre-
construction, construction, postcon-
struction) and the unit costs (e.g.,
wages, rents, prices) associated with
them. Project profiles were developed
based on well-designed restoration and
creation projects, and costs per task
and overall costs were developed by
estimating input requirements for each
6. The approach used to characterize projects in
terms of preconstruction, construction, and
postconstruction tasks and to estimate input
requirements and associated costs was
described in King, D., (1992). The economics of
ecological restoration. In Natural Resource
Damage Assessment: Law and Economics, eds. J.
Duffield and K. Ward. New York: Wiley.
essential task and applying standard
unit costs. Hypothetical variations in
site and project characteristics were
used in some cases to determine how
engineering requirements and costs
change under differing site conditions
(e.g., variations in soil, slope, access,
and hydrology, or the presence of an
endangered species).
Summary of Secondary Data
We also collected cost records for indi-
vidual wetland creation, restoration,
and enhancement projects from pub-
lished and unpublished reports, the gen-
eral trade literature, and county, state,
and federal databases.7 These records
varied with respect to the degree of
detail regarding site and project
characteristics, but all included in-
formation about the general location of
the project, project size, and aggregate
project cost. We believe this to be the
largest and most comprehensive wet-
land restoration cost database in the
world. However, for reasons that will be
described later, we believe that it suffers
from the same limitations as most other
generally available restoration cost data
and provides a poor basis for under-
standing the economics of wetland
restoration.
Special Data Limitations
The secondary data includes cost esti-
mates and cost records for some
restoration projects that were under-
taken outside of a strictly agricultural or
mitigation context. These projects fall
7. Our database includes examples of wetland
creation, restoration, and enhancement, as
well as construction of wetlands for water
quality improvement, waterfowl habitat, and
for other purposes. Approximately half of all
records are for restoration or creation of
wetlands on agricultural lands outside of a
mitigation context. Over 95% of the cases in
the remaining half of the database are
mitigation projects. Three-quarters of them
were mitigation of road or highway impacts to
wetlands.
-------
under two general categories: (1) wet-
land construction and restoration pro-
jects designed to improve water quality
(e.g., treat sewage, storm water, farm
runoff, and acid mine drainage), and (2)
voluntary projects to create or restore
specific wetland functions (e.g., duck
habitat).8 Costs of constructed wet-
lands designed to improve water quality
were well within the range of costs of
wetlands created or restored for mitiga-
tion. However, because siring, design,
and construction decisions for these
projects were directed exclusively at
waste treatment, we considered them to
be a special case and have not analyzed
them further.
The cost records for voluntary pro-
jects, even where they might have been
useful, were also of limited value. Cost
records and descriptions for those pro-
jects were often incomplete. In fact, be-
cause the cost estimates for projects
that use volunteers often exclude the
opportunity cost of contributed labor
and other "in kind" contributions, they
may add to the problem of under-re-
ported costs.
Other Problems
Our secondary database contained a
few records of exceptionally high costs,
including one case of restoration costs
near $1.5 million per acre. However, fur-
ther investigation revealed that unusu-
ally high costs were usually pushed up
by extremely small project size (under
one-half acre) or by extraordinary con-
ditions at the restoration site (e.g., the
need to blast through granite to attain
an acceptable elevation). In many cases
the selection of extraordinary sites ap-
8. For a detailed discussion of constructed wet-
lands for wastewater treatment, see Hammer,
D. A., ed. 1989. Constructed Wetlands For
Wastewater Treatment. Chelsea, MI: Lewis.
For a discussion of projects designed to
achieve broader water quality objectives, see
Moshiri, G. A., ed. 1993. Constructed Wetlands
for Water Quality Improvement. Boca Raton,
pears to have been the result of regula-
tory decisions, in particular, the regula-
tory preference for on-site rather than
off-site mitigation. There are many rea-
sons why on-site mitigation might be
preferred to off-site mitigation, and we
did not compare on-site and off-site al-
ternatives to determine if there were
significant cost differences. However,
there were clearly cases where high lev-
els of spending in restoration would
been better invested if siting decisions
were based on a search for more favor-
able locations from the perspective of
improving wetland or watershed func-
tions rather than strictly adhering to the
regulatory preference for on-site mitiga-
tion.
There were two other noteworthy
sources of upward bias associated with
high cost projects in our secondary
database. The providers of cost data for
some of these projects were unable to
distinguish between restoration costs
and the costs of earth moving, land-
scaping, and other tasks associated
with the construction project that
resulted in the need for mitigation; this
was especially true for highway
expansion projects. In other cases, it
was impossible for providers of cost
data to distinguish between restoration
costs and the costs of engaging in the
wetland permitting process itself; this
was especially true for large complex
projects and mitigation banks.
Ironically, these sources of upward cost
bias contributed to our decision to base
our cost estimates primarily on an anal-
ysis of our own primary data rather
than the larger secondary database.
In the final analysis, we chose to
downplay the empirical record associ-
ated with historical mitigation projects
(the secondary database) and relied
primarily on the cost profiles we devel-
oped ourselves (the primary database).
The reasons why we made this decision
may be more important for understand-
-------
ing the economics of wetland restoration
than the actual cost estimates that re-
sulted from our research.
Reinterpreting the Dismal Record
Recent surveys confirm that restoration
projects undertaken to meet mitigation
requirements under Section 404 of the
Clean Water Act have had extraordi-
narily high failure rates, over 50% in
Florida, California, and the mid Atlantic
states.9 These high failure rates are often
used as evidence that restoration science
is failing. What is rarely reported with
the evidence of mitigation failure, how-
ever, is the fact that in many cases, the
causes of these failures are known—bad
plans, poo. execution, lack of follow-up,
and so on. In fact, in both Florida and
the Mid-Atlantic region, many historical
mitigation "failures" occurred because
planned projects were never undertaken
(34% and 16% of projects examined, re-
spectively). Analyzing the records of
projects that were undertaken reveals a
9. Several reports on the rate of successful
wetland mitigation are now available. (1)
Bernstein, G. and R. L. Zepp, Jr. 1990.
Evaluation of selected wetland creation
projects authorized through the Corps of
Engineers Section 404 Program. U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, Annapolis Field Office,
Annapolis, MD; (2) Florida Department of
Environmental Regulation. 1991. Report on the
Effectiveness of Permitted Mitigation.
Department of Environmental Regulation,
Tallahassee, FL; (3) Erwin, K. L. 1991. An
Evaluation of Wetland Mitigation within the
South Florida Water Management District.
South Florida Water Management District,
West Palm Beach, FL; (4) Crewz, D. W. and R.
R. Lewis III. 1991. An Evaluation of Historical
Attempts to Establish Emergent Vegetation in
Marine Wetlands in Florida. Florida Sea
Grant Technical Paper TP-60. Florida Sea
Grant College, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville,
FL; (5) Race, M. S. 1985. Critique of present
wetlands mitigation policies in the United
States based on an analysis of past
restoration projects in San Francisco Bay.
Environmental Management 9 (I): 71-82. Some
care must be used in interpreting these studies
because "success" has been defined in
disparate ways (see Harvey, H. T. and M. N.
Josselyn. 1986. Wetlands restoration and
mitigation policies: comment. Environmental
Management 10 (5) 567-9, and Kusler, J. A.
and M. E. Kentula. 1989. Wetland Creation and
Restoration: The Status of the Science).
similar lack of commitment. For exam-
ple, at some sites once one excluded the
cost of land and the cost of engaging in
the 404 permitting process itself, the
amount of money devoted to actual
restoration activities (e.g., hydrological
testing, earth moving, planting) was as
low as a few hundred dollars per acre.
In general, the records of low costs and
high failure rates are two sides of the
same coin and reveal less about the
state of restoration science than the mo-
tivation of those providing restoration.
Underlying Incentives
The historical record of wetland
restoration projects has been influenced
to a significant extent by the fact that
providing wetland restoration is not
only an applied science, but a business.
With few exceptions those who design
and implement wetland restoration
projects earn their livelihoods satisfying
the needs of permit seekers involved in
the Section 404 wetland permitting pro-
gram. This mitigation market is driven
primarily by demand for low cost per-
mits, not the production of high quality
wetlands. There are undoubtedly techni-
cal limits to what restoration science can
achieve, but high failure rates have more
often been the result of underfunded,
badly planned, and poorly executed
restoration efforts than the result of
outright technical failure. These weak ef-
forts are linked directly to the perverse
incentive structure that evolved in the
mitigation market that served the needs
of Section 404 permit seekers.
Institutional or Market Failure
It would be easy to blame poor incen-
tives and mitigation failure on the wet-
land mitigation market itself. However,
the mitigation market, like most mar-
kets, was, in fact, extremely effective at
providing what was in demand—low
cost mitigation. What was extraordinary
about this market was that buyers
-------
(permit seekers) and sellers (mitigation
suppliers) had strong incentives to be
price conscious but hardly any reason to
be quality conscious. Apparently, the
regulators, who provide the only quality
control in the market, did not exercise
enough authority to link mitigation re-
sults with permit decisions. Without
such a link, those demanding and sup-
plying mitigation had little incentive to
spend what was necessary to provide
high quality restoration; thus low costs
and high failure rates. This basic prob-
lem was exacerbated by (1) the fact that
until recently permit approval some-
times depended only on a promise, of-
ten unsecured, to provide mitigation,
and (2) the fact that enforcement ac-
tions to ensure that permitees complied
with mitigation agreements were rare.
For purposes of cost analysis the im-
portant point is that cost records of
past mitigation projects generally reflect
the cost of low quality projects and
therefore offer a biased perspective.
However, as more attention is given to
the use of incentive-based and market-
based strategies for achieving wetland
and other environmental goals, there
may be more important lessons to be
learned from this example of how and
why environmental trading systems can
fail to achieve hoped-for results.10
III. BASELINE COST ESTIMATES
Typical Costs Per Acre
Figure 1 displays estimates of wetland
restoration costs (excluding land costs)
10. The hope that mitigation banking will improve
the success of wetland mitigation is an
important example. The role of regulations in
establishing the trading rules and incentives
for trade in wetland mitigation banks, and the
resulting effects on mitigation decisions are
described in Shabman, L., P. Scodari, and D.
King. 1994. Expanding Opportunities for
Successful Wetland Mitigation: The Private
Credit Market Alternative. Report prepared
for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water
Resources Institute, Fort Belvoir, VA.
for various project categories11. Figure 2
provides a more detailed breakdown of
agricultural conversion projects. Table 1
provides numerical cost estimates and
shows the allocation of costs by con-
struction stage (preconstruction, con-
struction, and post-construction) and by
input category (labor, equipment, mate-
rial, and other).
Economies of Scale
There are significant fixed costs associ-
ated with all but the most simple kinds
of restoration projects. As a result the
cost-per-acre for relatively small
restoration projects (e.g., plantings to
reduce shoreline erosion) can be excep-
tionally high while the cost-per-acre for
large scale projects (e.g., removing water
control devices to flood large areas) can
be relatively low. However, in many
cases the differences in per-acre-costs
between large and small projects reflect
differences in the types of projects un-
dertaken as well as economies of scale.
Until we further evaluate the rela-
tionships between project size and pro-
ject type, our preliminary indicators of
economies of scale should be used with
caution. However, Figure 3a illustrates
that an inverse relationship does seem
to exist between cost per acre and pro-
ject size for wetland mitigation projects
in the primary database, and Figure 3b
illustrates that a similar relationship
exists in the secondary database. To the
extent that the downward bias in pro-
ject costs in the secondary data is con-
sistent across project sizes, the
economies of scale exhibited by the sec-
ondary data are still meaningful.
A preliminary analysis of the primary
database suggests that for each 10% in-
crease in project size, costs per acre for
non-agricultural projects decline by
3.5%. An analysis of the larger sec-
11. Cost estimates for agricultural conversions
are based on our secondary data, all other
estimates are based on the primary data.
-------
ondary database revealed a remarkably
similar decline of 3.1% in costs per acre
for each 10% increase in project size.
Economies of scale for agricultural con-
version projects are significantly lower
with costs-per-acre declining by only
.6% for each 10% increase in project
size.
Cost and Performance
We developed our cost estimates on the
basis of engineering designs and con-
struction specifications with reasonably
high likelihoods of meeting restoration
targets, and gave adequate attention to
pre-construction research and post-con-
struction monitoring and maintenance.
For now, however, we make no claim as
to the likely success of projects in any
category or how project success should
be measured. A previous report by the
authors develops a framework for eval-
uating cost-performance relationships
and making quality-quantity tradeoffs
when evaluating wetland restoration al-
ternatives.12 Another report linking cost
information with specific restoration
design characteristics and weak and
strong success criteria for various kinds
of wetland restoration is forthcoming in
early 1994.13
IV. PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
On the basis of our preliminary analysis
of primary and secondary cost data for
wetland restoration projects and a re-
view of what is known about the suc-
12. See King, D. C, C. Bohlen, and K. J. Adler.
1993. Watershed Management and Wetland
Mitigation: A Framework for Determining
Compensation Ratios. A report prepared for
the EPA, Office of Policy, Planning, and
Evaluation. Washington, DC.
13. Weak success criteria may include achieving a
wetland designation based on federal
delineation criteria, or achieving a given level
of vegetative cover after a specified period of
time. Strong criteria may include maintaining a
population of specific target species, achieving
certain sediment trapping or nutrient removal
goals, or achieving "functional equivalency"
with a natural reference wetland.
cess of these projects and the economic
and regulatory conditions under which
they were undertaken, we reached the
following general conclusions:
• Restoration success depends on the level
of spending on restoration and the mo-
tivation of the restoration provider, as
well the state of restoration science and
site-specific conditions.
• Historically low restoration costs and
historically low success rates for non-
agricultural restoration projects reflect
as much about the failure of regulators
to demand results as the failure of
restoration science to provide results.
• Because conditions in mitigation mar-
kets—the rules of exchange and units of
exchange—are determined by regula-
tors, they can control the incentives
that motivate mitigation suppliers and
determine how cost-quality tradeoffs
are made.
• The development of wetland restora-
tion as an applied science and as a pol-
icy tool will depend on how well regu-
lators manage the incentives in mitiga-
tion markets.
• Site-specific differences can cause the
cost of apparently similar projects to
differ significantly, sometimes by a
factor of five or ten. However, pre-
dictability and reliability increases
substantially if only a few basic facts
are known about the restoration site. So
far our analysis suggests that cost ad-
justment factors based on simple indica-
tors of site conditions can reduce cost es-
timating error to within acceptable
bounds.
• The physical characteristics and geo-
graphic scale of agricultural conversion
projects and projects undertaken as mit-
igation for wetland losses differ signif-
icantly. Even reliable information
about the costs of agricultural conver-
sions is of limited value when assessing
the potential of restoration within the
broader context of regulatory policy.
• Wetland restoration is an emerging
field of applied science with very few
-------
engineering or performance standards,
and the range of skills and experience
among restoration specialists is enor-
mous. This is reflected in a wide range
of costs and success rates for most types
of restoration projects.
-------
Figure 1. Estimates of Wetland Restoration Costs by Wetland Category.
Cost Per Acre
(In 1993 $; excludes land costs)
$300.0 -
$250.0 -
"3"
1 $200.0 i
CD
(0
Z)
Jg $150.0 -
K
^^
g $100.0 •
8
$50.0 •
$0.0 -I
•
•
<
•
•
4
i i 1 i
•
•
4
<
•
m
4
,
•
-high
> mean
median
• low
! . I . J . I . T .
3STJJ2 g Jj § ^ "§ 2^.2
§ o) co o 3 v>
z" 1 1 £J s! 1 i 111
$80.0 -r
Wetland Type
Average Cost Per Acre
$77.9
$0.0
Wetland Type
10
-------
Figure 2. Cost per acre for Agricultural Conversions
$2,000 -
$1,500 -
£
« $1,000 -
M
0
o
$500 -
$0 -
r
•
•
•
•
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t LI ~iM ~M ^^ *•* ;— fD JM
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P
Project Category
Table 1. Cost Estimates and Cost Allocation by Task and by Input Category
(excludes land cost).
Project Type
Aquatic Complex
Bed
FW
Mixed
FW
Forest*
FW
Emerg.
Tidal
FW
Salt
Marsh
Man- Agric.
grove Conv"
Project Costs (Thousands)
Average
Minimum
Maximum
Median
Sample Size
Breakdown by Tasks:
Preconstruction
Construction
Postconstruction
$19.5
18.3
21.7
18.6
3
17%
63
20
$56.7
4.3
258.8
24.8
8
10%
74
16
$25.3
1.4
65.8
23.4
10
5%
78
17
$77.9
0.9
248.4
42.7
19
9%
74
18
$48.7
1.7
170.6
35.2
28
13%
58
28
$42.0
0.6
92.6
32.9
3
9%
87
4
$18.1
1.0
43.6
10.2
9
16%
73
11
$18.0
2.1
42.8
13.6
4
13%
66
21
$1.0
0.005
20.8
0.5
494
0%
100
0
Breakdown by Input Category:
Labor
Materials
Equipment
Other
58%
8
34
0
50%
23
14
14
74%
10
16
0
51%
30
18
2
63%
26
9
1
31%
54
14
1
52%
27
20
2
51%
21
28
0
45%
0
55
0
* High end of range involves researching and restoring hydrology and planting; low end involves restoring
hydrology only.
* * Cost breakdowns for agricultural conversions are based on a project consisting of hydrologic
modification without planting or formal plan development.
11
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Figure 3a: Economies of Scale—Primary Data
1000000--
100000- -
10000-•
1000- •
« 100-•
I
I
10--
0.1
10000000-
1000000-
100000-
10000-'
1000"
"g 100
o 10-t-
o
10
Project Size (Acres)
100
Figure 3b: Economies of Scale—Secondary Data
1000
oo
X
(0 00
CD o 8 Non-agricultural
- is
Agricultural
O Non-agricultural projects
D Agricultural projects
1
0.001
—I—
0.01
-H
4-
0.1
1 10
Project Size (Acres)
100
1000
—I
10000
12
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