EP 1165-2-502
30 Sep 99
a. The Corps' Regulatory program not only administers environmental compliance
requirements, it also supports broader ecosystem management goals. Opportunities exist for Civil
Works regulatory and ecosystem restoration initiatives to be mutually beneficial. The Corps'
Regulatory program encourages development of watershed management plans that protect and
restore important elements of aquatic ecosystems. Ecosystem restoration planning is done within
the context of broader ecosystem management goals, and in support of watershed management
plans. Ecosystem restoration planning utilizes broad water resources development and
management perspectives which may be useful in regulatory decision making. Regulatory staff
may contribute to the formulation and implementation of ecosystem restoration projects by sharing
valuable stakeholder contacts and technical expertise. There may be opportunities for the
Regulatory program, to encourage compensatory mitigation requirements on priority areas as
identified in regional management and restoration plans. Both cost-shared Civil Works ecosystem
restoration projects and compensatory mitigation efforts (including wetland mitigation banks (see
paragraph 9b.), may support regional restoration objectives and broader ecosystem management
goals. Because of these opportunities and in the interest of preventing the two programs from
working at cross purposes, close coordination between ecosystem restoration planning and Corps
Regulatory staffs is encouraged.
b. There may be instances where non-Federal sponsors who have worked with the Corps to
develop ecosystem restoration plans decide to proceed with project implementation on their own.
In these instances, the implemented project would not be a Federal project and the implementing
entity would need to apply for all necessary Federal, state and local permits that the project activity
would require. Pursuant to 33 CFR 320-330, an applicant would need to submit an application to
the Corps for any work occurring in waters of the United States, including wetlands. The NEPA
documentation and the Section 404(b)(1) analysis completed as part of the earlier conceived Civil
Works project may provide information useful to the applicant.
16. Ecosystem Restoration Evaluation. The information used in formulating, evaluating and
selecting ecosystem restoration alternatives includes both quantitative and qualitative information
about outputs, costs, significance, acceptability, completeness, effectiveness, and reasonableness of
costs. This information is summarized below and guidance on developing this information is
provided in ER 1105-2-100.
a. Computation of Costs and Benefits. An ecosystem restoration proposal must be justified on
the basis of its contribution to restoring the structure or function, or both, of a degraded
ecosystem, when considering the cost of the proposal. Ecosystem restoration projects are justified
through a determination that the combined monetary and non-monetary benefits of the project are
greater than its monetary and non-monetary costs.
(1) As such, plan selection is not based on economic justification in terms of a traditional
monetary benefit to cost analysis, since the majority of benefits associated with the primary outputs
of ecosystem restoration can rarely be quantified in dollars. Therefore, ecosystem restoration
proposals need not have either a benefit-cost ratio greater than 1.0, or positive net economic
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