MARKET-BASED APPROACHES TO STREAM RESTORATION IN THE USA (Invited Presentation)

Market-based approaches to environmental management have drawn a great deal of criticism, but we know surprisingly little about how and why they shape landscapes and hydroscapes. In this talk, I begin to fill that gap by presenting data from an interdisciplinary critical physical geography study of the emerging practice of stream mitigation banking in the U.S. In the most common form of stream mitigation banking (SMB), a for-profit company buys land with a damaged stream on it and restores it to produce stream mitigation credits which can then be purchased by developers and public agencies to fulfill their permit obligations under the U.S. Clean Water Act. SMB began in 1998, and has since spread rapidly across the U.S. Drawing on data from document analysis, interviews, and geomorphic fieldwork, I argue that SMB has a clear hydroscape signature, one that requires both physical and social analysis to see.