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Growing Water Toolkit

Below is an overview of our Growing Water portfolio with descriptions of the original project goals and links to pertinent products, tools, and/or project websites.

Creating Improvements to the Great Lakes Ecosystem to Offset Withdrawal Requests
This is the first phase of a project to develop up to five stream and wetland restoration projects that will create improvement credits available to an entity. This team expects the project to proceed in two phases. In the first phase, the team will identify potential sites and screen them for their ability to generate resource improvements. The team will then develop restoration plans for each site including the design of an ongoing monitoring and assurance program. Last, the team will develop a system to identify and measure resource improvements, based on the work previously supported by the Fund. In the second phase, the team will create a land trust (or series of trusts) to hold the property, construct the improvement projects and market the resulting improvements.

Land and Water Resources, Inc.
Contact: David Urban
847-553-8675
dturban@lawrinc.com

Products:
1. Water Resources Improvement Trust (WRIT) Operating Agreement
2. WRIT Contractor Agreement
3. Stream Mitigation Credit Agreement
4. Agreement to Establish a Stream Mitigation Bank

Developing a Process to Quantify and Facilitate Water Withdrawal Driven Ecosystem Improvements
The team will identify resource improvements from changes in land and water uses, develop and implement a tool to register those ecosystem improvements, and create the legal and financial arrangements to trade or sell credits to those interested in securing increased basin withdrawals. The team will identify the likely hydrological benefits of wetland restoration, stormwater retention, and various agricultural and residential best management practices and then couple the hydrologic benefits to expected improvements in ecological condition. Standards for various types and magnitudes of ecological improvements will be developed and a mechanism to register improvements will be created. Last, the team expects to identify the legal, financial and insurance mechanisms required to support trading or sales of improvement "credits".

CH2M Hill
Contact: Mark Mittag
414-272-2426
mark.mittag@ch2m.com

1. Ecosystem Improvement Transaction Example Contracts
2. Quality Gallon Concept
3. Offsite Improvement Example Contract

Restoring Flow Regimes Through Growing Water Transactions: Basin-Wide Case Studies
This is the first phase of a project to investigate and build environmental markets for the ecological improvements associated with restoring natural flow regimes. In this first phase, the team expects to identify existing efforts that are, or easily could be, generating ecological improvements at three to six areas in the Basin. For each location, the team will identify the full suite of environmental benefits generated, define how to create rights in those improvements, identify why those projects are generating improvements, and how they are presently being accounted. Based on the elements common to the case sites, the team will prepare model methods to capture the value of the benefits created and model contracts to convey rights to a second party. The project will also consider how market mechanisms can be incorporated into existing local, state, and federal environmental regulations, land use decision-making and infrastructure planning and investment.

Environmental Trading Network
Contact: Mark Kieser
269-344-7117
mkieser@kieser-associates.com

1. Conservation Finance Safety Net
2. Ecosystem Service District Concept

Identifying and Valuing Restoration Opportunities at Watershed and Subwatershed Scales
The team will develop, test and apply a suite of watershed assessment tools to identify high-value restoration opportunities that reverse ecological impairments associated with altered hydrology. The team will conduct a baseline survey of watershed types in the Basin-identifying boundaries, dominant hydrology, dominant land use and principal supply of water for human uses. From this inventory, the team will select four pilot watersheds based on the nature of ecological impairments, the nature of restoration activities that are planned or underway, and whether any other Fund supported activity is underway at the site. In these watersheds, the team will test the ability of several protocols to predict and track the consequences of the restoration work including the index of hydrologic alteration, Instream Flow Council protocols, and ecological flow prescription protocols. Building on work at these sites, the team will create a set of methods to value and compare different restoration opportunities. Ultimately, the team expects to generate a "water base unit" metric to measure ecological improvements.

Applied Ecological Services
Contact: Steven Apfelbaum
608-897-8547
steve@appliedeco.com

1. Summary of Project Tools

Restoring Great Lakes Basin Waters Through the Use of Conservation Credits and Integrated Water Balance Analysis System
The team will develop a water-balance decision support system that will, in turn, support the research and development of a water conservation credit system. The team will support and build on existing efforts to link three existing models-surface hydrology, groundwater movement and in-stream biological condition-to evaluate the potential consequences of changes in groundwater withdrawals. The team will estimate the impact of various water conservation and harvesting techniques on groundwater supply. The team expects to run these linked models in two selected watersheds to prototype a water conservation credit verification system. In these watersheds, the estimated effect of installing practices to enhance groundwater recharge would be balanced against new requests for withdrawals.

Michigan State University
Contact: Jon Bartholic
517-353-9785
bartholi@msu.edu

1. Discussion of a Hypothetical Permit System and Conservation Credits
2. Power Point Introduction to the Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool
3. Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool

Lake Ontario Resource Improvement Opportunity Assessment
This team will expand the geographic scope of a resource improvement screening model (developed by Cornell University in a previous grant) to all of Lake Ontario, create a user-friendly template that allows a project proponent to use the screening level information to assemble an improvement project, and create methods to capture the benefits which accrue to that project over space and time. In particular, the team will allow a user to identify the full suite of restoration opportunities that might exist at the site in addition to the more regionally common opportunities used as a "screen" to identify likely sites. Last, the team expects to develop tools that will allow a project proponent to identify the resource improvements that will occur offsite, or later in time.

Natural Heritage Institute
Contact: Gregory Thomas
415-693-3000
gat@n-h-i.org

1. Project Website (summary)
2. Project Web Server (allows access to and query of the project's GIS results)

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