Viability Lab designed the platform that has become the Michigan Wetland Banking Fund as one of its early examples of its decades of experience, innovation and success in designing funding mechanisms to complete strategic opportunities. Pioneering new financial tools is a potentially daunting process, which is why Viability Lab’s focus on research, knowledge and creativity are only the beginning. Research and keen attention to detail, has put Viability Lab on the forefront of monetizing environmental services.

 

To mitigate building construction in wetlands, developers are required to create wetlands elsewhere to offset the elimination of the original. As already demonstrated, Viability Lab doesn't do "typical." So when land developer, HEDCOR (Holland, Michigan), asked Viability Lab to explore wetland mitigation alternatives for an upcoming industrial park construction project, we not only delivered an answer, but a sea change.

 

The result of Viability Labs’ research and development piloted Michigan’s first Wetland Mitigation Bank (WMB). Instead of fabricating individual wetlands to offset each separate building project, Viability Lab’s Wetland Mitigation Bank developed a large wetlands from which multiple projects could “withdraw” their required acreage, as needed, in the form of mitigation credits.

 

The WMB benefits developers by reducing permit processing time and costs, and by increasing certainty regarding the availability of adequate mitigation sites. It also benefits the state's wetland resources by establishing new wetlands and consolidating small mitigation projects into larger, better designed and managed units.

 

This Viability-Lab-created concept was quickly adopted by the state of Michigan, which has since developed it into a statewide program under the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).