Blackberry Creek Headwaters Wetland Mitigation Bank

Campton Township, Illinois

This project involved designing, permitting, constructing and managing a wetland mitigation bank on a 220-acre property with a long history of agricultural use and an extensive drain tile system.
To create 90 acres of wetland, V3 removed the drain tile system, installed groundwater monitoring wells, planted native wetland plants and established native wetland and prairie plant communities.
V3 is conducting annual management, compliance monitoring, prescribed burning, weed control and vegetation sampling.
Phase 1 resulted in the successful restoration of 69 acres of diverse, high quality wet prairie, sedge meadow and prairie buffer.
Phase 1 met all wetland mitigation banking performance standards after the five year management and monitoring period resulting in the release of all financial assurances and the certification of 48.9 credits on January 22, 2013.
A mitigation bank instrument (MBI) was approved for the expansion of Phase 2 with a total of 37.81 credits.
Phase 2 met wetland hydrology performance standards in 2018 and met the interim vegetation standards in 2019 which released 13.23 credits.
Final wetland performance standards were met during the 2021 growing season to release the remaining 13.75 credits.