Mitigation

AWWI's Mitigation Initiative recognizes that despite all efforts to avoid and minimize impacts to an insignificant level, the potential may still exist for some projects to have a significant residual impact. Currently, stakeholders have no easily agreed-upon method for how best to mitigate for such residual impacts due in part to the fact that mitigation has a wide variety of meanings, depending on who is asking and the context of the question.

AWWI seeks to develop innovative, cost-effective and widely agreed-upon methods for evaluating project impacts and, when necessary, applying regional mitigation solutions and incentives that address impacts that cannot be avoided or minimized into insignificance.

The Compensatory Wildlife Mitigation Evaluation

In May 2009, AWWI selected the environmental consulting team of Solano Partners Inc. to produce a detailed national report that compiles the following information:

• Existing compensatory mitigation concepts, practices, and mechanisms;
• Situations where compensatory mitigation is allowed by law and overview of common goals/standards;
• The extent to which effectiveness has been monitored/assessed and resultant findings;
• Review of publicly available data and recommendations for making it more widely available;
• A discussion and illustration of the economics of compensatory mitigation (re: wind development).