Mitigation Banking in California: Ecosystem Restoration Supporting the Marine Corps and United States Fish and Wildlife Service
Spencer Lindley, PE
Burns & McDonnell
Omaha, NE
Impacts to wetlands, streams, or habitat conservation areas can often be unavoidable during development projects. Without the right partner, mitigation offsets required in permits issued by Federal and State Resource Agencies can be costly and delay projects. Mitigation banking compensates for those impacts and provides a streamlined mitigation solution.
In 2019, Burns & McDonnell was contracted by the U.S. Marine Corps to offset riparian habitat impacts from proposed infrastructure upgrades at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego, California. In collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Moosa Creek Riparian Restoration Project in Bonsall, California, transformed a former golf course into a large-scale riparian and floodplain restoration site within an urban setting. The project required careful integration of regulatory compliance, water-quality objectives, floodplain-modification constraints, and hydraulic and civil engineering considerations to deliver ecological benefits while supporting mission-critical infrastructure.
In total, the project restored over 70 acres, including more than 35 acres of riparian corridor, and re-established floodplain connectivity while meeting local agency and USFWS performance standards.
This presentation will discuss the overall framework for establishing a mitigation bank and use the Moosa Creek Riparian Restoration Project as a case study to highlight the process from site identification and feasibility evaluation through design, construction, and mitigation credit release.
About Spencer Lindley, PE
Spencer Lindley, P.E., is a civil engineer with Burns & McDonnell Engineering Company, Inc., where he has worked since 2016. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. As part of the firm’s Environmental Services Group, Spencer specializes in stream and wetland restoration, mitigation banking, hydraulic modeling, and watershed studies. He has served as lead civil engineer on several ecosystem restoration and bank stabilization projects across the United States, supporting both public and private clients.