By taking a fresh look at the 10,600 acres owned by the Boy Scouts of America, Trinity Works was able to find $5 million in credits for water quality.

 

The Summit site was selected for its spectacular national beauty, its recreation potential and its adjacency to 70,000 acres of National Park property.  The New River sits just below the Summit property. It is a designated a National River and is the engine of a robust hospitality industry built on whitewater sports. Protecting the river’s water quality is a top priority for the National Park Service, WV Department of Environmental Protection, and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

 

Trinity Works led a partnership of environmental scientists, state and federal agencies to identify areas of The Summit that carried significant ecological value. These areas included habitat for the endangered Indiana bat, stands of old growth eastern hardwood forest that had never been logged and high-gradient mountain streams.

 

As a result of this analysis, Trinity Works proposed a placing a conservation easement of 1,000 acres in the remote northeast corner of the site that would limit future construction, while permanently protecting the watershed of streams that drain directly into the New River.

 

       By placing a large parcel of ecologically valuable land in

       conservation, New River water quality would be protected along

       with habitat and biodiversity.  Through this holistic approach to

       conservation, the interests of many diverse stakeholders were

       satisfied.

 

Working with the WV DEP and a team of environmental scientists, Trinity Works negotiated a dollar value for the service of providing clean water to the New River from the streams within the conservation easement. The streams placed in conservation were valued at 46, 291 credits for a total value of $37,032,800.   The BSA has used $3.5M of those credits mitigating work in other areas of the site. They have 39,209 potential credits remaining that could be used by the Scouts or developed and sold.

 

Trinity Works used a conservation easement as the real estate instrument to unlock the value of protecting water quality in the New River.

 

       For other sites, hidden value streams might take the form of

       agriculture, renewable energy, habitat, biodiversity, water

       quality, carbon sequestration, or even recreation. We know

       every piece of land has value.

 

Trinity Works goes beyond the traditional real estate development toolbox to find new forms of capital for our partners.