Icarus Ecological Services and Carter Environmental Services teamed up to design and permit the first row crop to wetlands mitigation bank in Florida. Located on 640 acres of historic wetlands as determined by two separate certified soil scientist investigations, the current mitigation plan will remove over 3,200 lbs of nitrogen and 380 lbs of phosphorus from entering the St. Johns River every year through Tocoi, McCullough and Sixmile creeks. The Poa Boy Mitigation Bank (PBMB) is the headwaters for Basin 5, a large and very active regulatory basin stretching from St. Augustine north to Jacksonville, and located on both sides (east and west shorelines) of the St. Johns River.
The PBMB restoration plan calls for 368 acres of Basin Swamp establishment around a core of 171 acres of bottomland hardwood forest, with pockets of freshwater marsh and mesic oak hammock islands adjacent to the marshes. This unique design will allow for maximum edge effects, a diversity of habitats and mimics proportionally the percentages of these habitats found within Basin 5. In addition, the St. Johns County Crop Alternative Program (CAP) will benefit from the nutrient reductions thus assisting the County with their Basin Management Action Plan (BMAP) goals. The location of PBMB at the headwaters of Basin 5 and connectivity to adjacent conservation lands provides for significant watershed support and improvement of water quality and wetland function. In effect, 640 acres of wetlands were taken offline through the construction of over 33,000 linear feet of drainage canals and through the implementation of the Bank will be put back online into the watershed. Earthwork to fill all of the onsite ditches and feather down to final elevations will be followed by planting of 270,000 7-gallon wetland canopy species.