US Watershed Mitigation Market Analysis
25 ranked US mitigation markets, ordered by the credit sales recorded in reach of each watershed over the last ten complete calendar years (2016–2025). A market is ranked only if it is among the country's most active on both measures below — sales its banks could reach, and sales its own banks generated. Both measures count transactions rather than credits, because credit units are not comparable across classes. In-lieu fee withdrawals are excluded: a program is one counterparty however many sites it holds. Measurable activity — not a claim of national completeness.
Figures mirrored from USACE RIBITS · synced
“Sales to here” does not sum. A bank’s service area covers several watersheds, so one sale is counted toward every watershed that bank can serve — adding the column down counts the same sale many times. “Sales from here” does sum exactly: each sale is counted once, against the single basin the selling bank sits in.
About the data on this page
Single-client banks are excluded from supply figures. In-lieu fee sites are left out of these figures. They are a separate product, second in the Corps’ preference order, and a program is one counterparty however many sites it holds. What we call a “credit sale” is a credit withdrawal — the entry written in the federal credit ledger when credits are committed to a permit. At commercial banks a withdrawal generally represents a sale; at a single-client bank it offsets the sponsor’s own project. The figures count ledger transactions, not distinct purchases — one purchase may produce several withdrawals — and we count entries rather than credits moved, because credit classes are different units and cannot be added together. Sales are counted from the withdrawals in RIBITS’s own credit ledger over the last 10 complete years. They are counts of transactions, never sums of credits, for the same reason totals are kept per class.
Two counts appear on this page, and the second is part of the first. Banks that can sell here counts every commercial bank whose approved service area covers this basin and that has credits to sell today — what a buyer standing here can actually reach. One bank can serve several basins, so its sales count toward each. Banks based here counts how many of those same banks also sit inside the basin. Because the second is a subset of the first, they are never added together. Availability, runway and pace all describe the first count. The ranking is a separate measure: basins are ordered by ten years of sales made by the banks that can sell into them, and a basin only takes a place on the board if it also ranks nationally on the sales its own banks generated. Watershed groupings come from each bank’s service area intersected with the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. We group at the HUC-6 level because it is the scale at which these patterns are legible: a HUC-8 is sub-regional and usually too small, while a HUC-4 is large enough to average away the local dynamics that decide whether credits are available where you need them. Those links are refreshed monthly rather than nightly, because service areas and watershed boundaries don’t change frequently. The basin description, and the decision to give this basin a page at all, are ours. That selection is reviewed annually. A watershed makes the ranked board only if it has high sales by both measures we compute — sales in reach of it, and sales generated by the banks sited inside it. Runway is available credits divided by the average annual sales pace over five complete years, per class. It assumes today’s pace continues and no new bank opens — it is an arithmetic ratio, not a forecast.