RES Receives Two Project Merit Awards from EBJ

Environmental Business Journal® (EBJ), a strategic business intelligence provider to the environmental industry, has honored RES and its partners with two awards for Project Merit, Natural Resource Management, for 2018. The awards recognize two separate ecological restoration projects.

The first project, funded by global energy firm BHP, restored a coastal marsh that serves as part of the natural infrastructure protecting a vulnerable community in southern Louisiana from future storm surges. Envisioned and implemented by RES, in partnership with the America’s WETLAND Foundation (AWF), the BHP Terrebonne Biodiversity and Resiliency Projects comprise two sites, located alongside a local levee system, where saltwater intrusion had destroyed the original bald cypress forest. The projects provide resiliency to Terrebonne Parish citizens by protecting and stabilizing the levee systems. RES restored 125 wetland acres in total, including creating 2.25 miles of marsh terraces, planting 35,000 bald cypress trees and conducting invasive species management.

Benefits to the local community include an estimated annual economic value of $1.2 million, as well as carbon sequestration, improved water quality (phosphorus/nitrogen reductions), enhanced biodiversity, and community awareness via planting events and updates. Project details are discussed in the project overview and volunteer planting day videos.

“BHP believes that giving back to the communities where we operate is a key factor in doing business,” Myron Protz, BHP Gulf of Mexico General Manager, said. “Through this project, we know that strengthening the ecosystem provides a wide range of benefits at a time when the region is challenged and needs the cooperation of all sectors.”

For the second project, RES leveraged its site selection and restoration expertise in challenging environments to produce compensatory mitigation complemented by land donation, in coordination with local environmental stakeholders, achieving large-scale, perpetual conservation in Louisiana’s Maurepas Swamp.