You may have noticed a dearth of posts in the last week or two. Stories is not on vacation. In fact, far from it. RS has significant wetland restoration construction underway in Tennessee and made another significant out-of-state trip last week. (More on Tennessee in a later post)
But what has really consumed our time is the pending North Carolina Ecosystem Enhancement Program Request for Proposals. These so-called Full Delivery RFP’s are the “spec and purchase” procurement model used by our state Fee Program, the EEP.
We are fundamentally opposed to Fee Programs at RS. But if you simply must operate one — the Full-Delivery method is the way to go for purchasing. Under Full-Delivery, the land acquisition — and every other aspect of the mitigation — is provided by professional mitigation companies under a technically adjusted low-bid contract flat-priced to the state with with a performance bond.
(The other method, known as “In-House,” or the misnomer “Design-Bid-Build,” charges the state with purchasing the land. “I’m the government and I am here to purchase a strip of your land and be your environmental neighbor for eternity.” Then the NCEEP awards no-bid on-call contracts to design the site; and separate construction, monitoring, and species control contracts afterward. The restoring ecosystems and landowner relations are then managed for perpetuity from the State Property Office and the Parker Lincoln Building in Raleigh.)
But I dally too long with procurement policy.
The bottom line is we are working hard in the river basins below to locate and place under contract damaged ecosystems that can provide the specified type and amount of restored resource as mitigation. On march 5th we will submit sealed technical and cost proposals to the state NCEEP representing a tremendous amount of watershed analysis and “kitchen table” work with landowners. I will keep you updated on our progress.
| Basin | SMU’s | Riparian | Non-Riparian | Buffer |
| Cape Fear 02 | 5000 | 16 | 5 | 0 |
| Cape Fear 03 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 87 |
| Catawba 01 | 5000 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| Catawba 03 | 2000 | 7 | 10 | 0 |
| Little TN 03 | 2500 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Tar-Pamlico 04 | 5550 | 0 | 0 | 11 |
| Yadkin 03 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Yadkin 05 | 7000 | 16 | 6 | 0 |
