Long-term stewardship, conservation easements, and the education program — answered in plain terms.
The short answers to what mitigation-bank sponsors want to know before placing a site with a long-term steward.
A long-term steward takes on the permanent care of a wetland, stream, or species mitigation bank after restoration is complete. Broad Water Innovations holds the conservation easement, manages the dedicated stewardship endowment, and performs annual on-the-ground monitoring with documented reporting for the life of the easement.
We are an IRT-approved long-term steward recognized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 13 districts across 11 states: Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri.
As a bank sells credits, stewardship funds are set aside for the land’s permanent care and moved into a dedicated endowment, held and invested under an Interagency Review Team–approved policy. Annual earnings fund on-the-ground monitoring, legal defense of the easement, and a catastrophic-event reserve, every year.
Either. We can serve as easement holder, long-term steward, or endowment manager: any one role, or all three. Many sponsors prefer one partner for the whole obligation, but the structure is flexible.
Placing a bank with Broad Water creates an unambiguous transfer of liability from the sponsor to a dedicated long-term steward, backed by a funded endowment. That is the assurance regulators look for and the clean exit sponsors need.
Our partners are mitigation-bank sponsors and the mitigation companies that develop bank sites. Landowner relationships are typically handled by those companies; Broad Water then holds the easement and stewards the land for the long term. If you are a landowner with a question, contact us and we can point you in the right direction.
The essentials of what a land trust does and how permanent protection actually works.
Broad Water Innovations is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit land trust based in Richmond, Virginia. We hold conservation easements, serve as a long-term steward of wetland, stream, and species mitigation banks, and manage the stewardship endowments that fund each property’s permanent care.
A conservation easement is a legal agreement that permanently limits how a piece of land can be used, protecting its conservation values forever, no matter who owns it in the future. As the easement holder, Broad Water monitors each property every year to make sure those protections hold.
A mitigation bank is a wetland, stream, or habitat area that has been restored or preserved to compensate for unavoidable environmental impacts elsewhere. Regulators require these sites to be permanently protected and cared for, which is where a long-term steward like Broad Water comes in.
Broad Water holds 104 conservation easements covering 12,519 acres on 22 properties across 11 states, and manages a stewardship endowment of $14 million dedicated to their permanent care. See Our Work for the full picture.
Broad Water is a member of the Land Trust Alliance, rated 4 stars by Charity Navigator, and approved as a long-term steward by the Interagency Review Team in Virginia. Every easement we hold is backed by Terrafirma conservation-defense insurance.
The BWI Environmental Studies Scholarship is a $2,500 award from Broad Water Innovations for a student pursuing environmental studies and a future in conservation. Applications are due June 1 each year.
Email jessica@broadwaterinnovations.org with the subject line “BWI Environmental Studies Scholarship” before the June 1 deadline, and Jessica will walk you through the application.
We bring industry professionals into AP and IB Environmental Science classrooms for panels, put students on restored ecological sites for field days, offer one-on-one consultation for students and educators exploring a path in conservation, and fund the annual scholarship. Teachers and students can contact us to bring a program to their school.
These questions also appear in context on the pages they came from:
Landowner, bank sponsor, educator, or student — we would love to hear from you.