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

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 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.

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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.

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 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.

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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-

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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

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(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.

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 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

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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.

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Figure 1. Estimates  of  Wetland Restoration Costs by Wetland Category.

                                 Cost Per Acre
                          (In 1993 $; excludes land costs)
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$250.0 -
"3"
1 $200.0 i
CD
(0
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Jg $150.0 -
K
^^
g $100.0 •
8
$50.0 •
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z" 1 1 £J s! 1 i 111
    $80.0  -r
                                Wetland Type


                            Average Cost Per Acre
                              $77.9
     $0.0
                                Wetland Type
                                 10

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                     Figure 2.  Cost per acre for Agricultural Conversions
$2,000 -
$1,500 -
£
« $1,000 -
M
0
o
$500 -
$0 -
r
•

•



•
•
^


^
c






•
<







1



^



<



•4
> .












<
1



-Thigh
4 mean
ilow








•
* . I


- CC'n'S^Jf (D
= 00 0 £ 0 W W
t LI ~iM ~M ^^ *•* ;— fD JM
fe g S 8 g* Q m =
                       (0

                       UJ
0>
CC
                                      o
                                                                     -=
                                                                     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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