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Wetland Mitigation Fee Policy • Page 3 Minnesota Board of Water & Soil Resources • www.bwsr.state.mn.us initiating the process. The fee will be assessed in two installments with the first being the initial fee of $1,000 at the time the account holder and/or landowner submits a written request to initiate the process. The second installment is the balance of the fee based on the actual cost to BWSR to complete the process. BWSR will not sign and accept the modified conservation easement until the easement acquisition fee is paid in full. Applicants that have received a wetland bank plan approval through a local government unit notice of decision and have initiated the easement acquisition process by submitting the required paperwork to BWSR prior to June 1, 2017 will not be charged the easement acquisition fee for that bank. The easement acquisition fee will periodically be adjusted for inflation by BWSR using the U.S. Department of Labor Employment Cost Index (ECI) for Total Compensation for State and Local Government Workers (seasonally adjusted). Adjustments will be made relative to the January ECI of the year of the last adjustment (with January 2016 as the base year for the first adjustment). BWSR staff will provide notification, via a public announcement or equivalent method, of a fee adjustment no later than 30 days prior to the effective date of the fee change. G. Easement Stewardship Fee. The easement stewardship fee will provide a source of revenue to cover the costs of monitoring State-held wetland mitigation easements over time. The fee must be an amount sufficient to cover the costs of managing the easement at a level that neither significantly over recovers nor under recovers the cost to the State. The easement stewardship fee will be assessed as a per credit fee applied when credits are withdrawn from the account. The easement stewardship fee will be determined according to Part III. I. Credits will not be withdrawn from the account and used for wetland replacement purposes until the easement stewardship fee has been paid. H. Credit Value Determination. A single credit value shall be determined for each bank service area and will be used for all transactions involving credit value within that bank service area. The single credit value for each bank service area shall be calculated using a weighted average of the credit value for each county based on the total area of each county within the bank service area. The county credit value shall be calculated as the product of the land value (expressed as dollars per acre) in the county and the wetland credit value coefficient. In counties with a ratio of tillable acres to rural/vacant acres greater than 20%, the land value shall be the average agricultural ("tillable") land value. In counties with a ratio of tillable acres to rural/vacant acres less than 20%, the Rural/Vacant land value will be used in place of the average agricultural land value. In Ramsey and Hennepin counties, the county credit value shall be the average of the credit values in adjacent counties. For Ramsey this includes Washington, Anoka, and Dakota counties. For Hennepin, this includes Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Scott, and Wright counties. All land values used in the credit value determination shall be as reported by the Minnesota Department of Revenue. The wetland credit value coefficient reflects the value added to the land encompassed by the mitigation bank easement as a result of the activities completed to generate wetland credits. It is determined by BWSR based on the average ratio of credit sale price to county land value, using credit sale price information available to BWSR. Upon enactment of this policy, the